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SERIES XXXI NO. 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

Under the Direction of the 

Departments of History, Political Economy, and 

Political Science 



THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND 
1720-1765 



BY 



CLARENCE P. GOULD, PH.D. 

Michael O. Fisher Professor of History in the University of Wooster 



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1913 



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THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND 
i 720- 1 765 



SERIES XXXI NO. I 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

Under the Direction of the 

Departments of History, Political Economy, and 

Political Science 



THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND 
1720-176^ 



bY 



CLARENCE P. GOULD, Ph.D. 

Michael O. Fisher Professor of History in the University of Wooster 



BALTIMORE 

THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

1913 






COPYRIGHT 1 9I3 BY 

THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 



MEM OF 

The New era printing company 
Lancaster. Pa. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. The Granting of Land 9 

II. The Charges on Land 28 

III. The Management of Land 60 

IV. Manors 89 






PREFACE 



These four chapters form part of a larger work intended 
to cover the economic history of Maryland in the period 
designated. The research for the entire work is about fin- 
ished, and several additional chapters are now complete ; but 
it has seemed desirable to publish as a monograph the part 
relating to the Land System, and to present later the other 
factors in the colonial life of the eighteenth century. 

The author is under obligations to Professors J. M. Vincent 
and Charles M. Andrews for aid and suggestion in the prepa- 
ration of this work. He also wishes to acknowledge indebt- 
edness to his mother for many of the arithmetical calcu- 
lations. 

C. P. G. 



Vli 



THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND 1720-176? 



CHAPTER I 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 

According to the terms of the charter of Maryland, Lord 
Baltimore was given the land "in free and common socage ;" 
and was empowered to "assign, alien, grant, demise, or 
enfeoff so many, such, and proportionate Parts and Parcels 
of the Premises, to any Person or Persons willing to pur- 
chase the same, as they shall think convenient, to have and 
to hold ... in Fee-simple, or Fee-tail, or for Term of Life, 
Lives, or Years; to hold of the aforesaid now Baron of 
Baltimore, his Heirs and Assigns, by . . . such . . . Services, 
Customs and Rents of this kind, as to the same now Baron 
of Baltimore, his Heirs and Assigns, shall seem fit and 
agreeable, and not immediately of Us." 

With such large powers over land, and with the experience 
of the earlier colonies concerning the unprofitableness of 
trade, it is easily seen why the proprietor, to reap his profit, 
turned toward the exploitation of the soil. Following the 
plan which had worked so successfully in Virginia, Lord 
Baltimore provided in his early conditions of plantation for 
the granting of land to those who would transport settlers 
into the colony. By each grant there was reserved to the 
proprietor a perpetual quit-rent, which, though originally 
payable in wheat, was fixed in 1671 at four shillings sterling 
per hundred acres. In 1683 transportation of settlers ceased 
to be the basis for the granting of lands, which were there- 
after obtainable only on the payment of a purchase price, 
called caution money, of two hundred pounds of tobacco per 
hundred acres. This was raised in 1684 to two hundred 

9 



IO THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

and forty pounds, which rate was doubled during the royal 
period. In 1717 the purchase price was changed to money 
at the rate of one penny for each pound of tobacco, making 
forty shillings sterling per hundred acres. 

These terms remained unchanged during the continuance 
of the commutation law, 1 but after its expiration in 1733 
an increase in the land rates again became very tempting to 
the proprietor. By the instructions to Edmund Jennings, 
judge of the land office, in that year, the purchase price was 
left at forty shillings sterling per hundred acres, but the 
quit-rent was raised from four shillings to ten shillings. 2 
Under these terms the number of land grants showed a 
sharp decrease, so that in 1738 the four shilling quit-rent 
was restored, but the purchase price was advanced from £2 
to £5 sterling per hundred acres. At the same time the 
land officials were informed that these were but minimum 
rates, and that higher rates should be demanded wherever, 
in the judgment of the governor, the secretary, and the 
judge of the land office, the desirability of the land would 
admit of it. 3 In practice, however, increased rates were 
seldom, if ever, demanded. After 1738 there was no fur- 
ther change in the land rates until the Revolution. 

The proprietor, however, was not entirely pleased with 
this settlement. Charles, Lord Baltimore, satisfied with his 
experiment with a ten shilling quit-rent, seems never to 
have contemplated raising the rates again; but Frederick, 
who succeeded Charles in 1751, began almost at once a long 
series of efforts to increase his revenue from lands. Know- 
ing that the population was rapidly increasing, and seeing 
that the Penns were obtaining higher rates from their lands, 
it is not strange that Frederick should have concluded that 
his charges were too low. In 1753 he appears to have given 

1 See p. 34 et seq. 

2 Land Office, Warrants, Liber EE, p. 306; John Kilty, The Land- 
holders' Assistant and Land-Office Guide, p. 232. 

3 Lower House Journal, May 25, 1744; Land Office, Warrants, 
Liber LG No. A, p. 135. This instruction bears date " at London 
15 Dec 1 ". 1738," but the precise date on which it reached the colony 
and went into force cannot be determined. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND I I 

instructions to grant no land at less than ten shillings sterling 
per hundred' acres, and to require within a specified time the 
settlement of a certain number of people on each grant. 
Both Colonel Lloyd, who was then agent, and Governor 
Sharpe wrote strongly opposing the change, and pointing 
out that although the rates as then established were not so 
high as those of Pennsylvania, where agricultural condi- 
tions were different, they were, nevertheless, much higher 
than those of Virginia. Sharpe's advice was accepted, and 
the rate was allowed to remain as before. 4 

About three months later, Sharpe again wrote opposing 
an advance in the price asked for land, but this time the 
advance suggested was of a little different nature. The 
system of granting lands was such that irregular bodies of 
ungranted lands were left interspersed among the lands 
granted, 3 and the proprietor seems to have suggested that 
these lands in the more populous sections of the province 
should bring a higher rate than land on the frontiers. Sharpe 
objected to this advance because the interspersed parcels 
were always the less desirable land, and were in such small 
quantities as to be worthless to any but the owners of 
adjoining tracts. 6 Again the advice of the governor 
prevailed. 

On the breaking out of the Old French and Indian War 
it became hopeless to think of any advance in land rates, 7 
but scarcely was peace declared before Secretary Calvert 8 
was sounding the temper of the leading men of the colony 
on the subject of an increase in the purchase price. His 

4 Archives of Maryland, vol. vi, p. 37. 

5 See p. 15. 
"Archives, vol. vi, p. 53. 

7 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 161, 294. 

8 Until the accession of Frederick the secretary of Maryland was 
an officer who kept the provincial records at Annapolis and con- 
trolled the county clerks. In that year — 175 1 — the proprietor ap- 
pointed as joint secretary his uncle, Cecilius Calvert, who lived in 
England, and who acted as private secretary and adviser. He was 
paid by contributions demanded from the higher officers of the colony. 
Being of a suspicious nature, he maintained correspondence with 
many persons in Maryland, apparently as a check on the governor. 
He died in 1765, and was succeeded by Hugh Hamersley. 



12 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

letter to Daniel Dulany brought out a strong reply in which 
Dulany discussed 1 the whole land situation, and blamed the 
low price of Maryland land as compared with that of Penn- 
sylvania largely on the enormous fees which were collected 
by the land officials. 9 The opposition thus developed was 
sufficient to cause the proprietor again to give up the idea of 
an immediate advance. Thus, although very anxious to 
stiffen the terms on which his lands were granted, he was 
repeatedly induced to abandon the plan by the advice of his 
own officers, who lived in the colony and were acquainted 
with conditions there. 

Persons who were willing to take up grants of back lands 
along the disputed borders obtained terms much more liberal 
than were granted to the patentees of land more desirably 
located. It is impossible to say just when this policy was 
inaugurated. In 1697 Governor Nicholson, writing to the 
Board of Trade, advised that the lands around the head of 
the bay be peopled as the first step toward the settlement of 
the boundary question. 10 A similar desire to take possession 
of the lands in dispute between Lord Baltimore and the 
Penns may have given rise to the policy of cheapening the 
back lands, for it is of this same disputed country that 
Philemon Lloyd was speaking when, in 1722, he wrote, 
" Now, th*. we are about Lycencing our People, to make 
Remote Settlem ts , we must likewise use the Proper Measures 
to protect them." 11 Though these words of Lloyd suggest that 
the policy of encouraging border settlements may have been 
springing up in 1722, there is nothing to prove that special 
rates were offered for the border lands before 1732. By 
that time the tide of German and other immigration was 
streaming from Pennsylvania across Maryland into the 
Valley of Virginia, and it is possible that the plan was partly 
intended to induce some of these people to settle in Maryland. 

At all events, it was proclaimed in 1732 that any person 

9 Calvert Papers, No. 2, pp. 241-42. 

10 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West 
Indies, 1696-1697, p. 422. 

"Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 57. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 1 3 

having a family, who would actually settle on any of the 
back lands of the north and west boundary between the 
Potomac and the Susquehanna river, might have two hundred 
acres in fee without payment of any part of the forty shil- 
lings per hundred acres caution money, the quit-rent at the 
rate of four shillings sterling per hundred acres to begin 
three years after settlement. Unmarried persons might have 
one hundred acres on the same terms. 12 By the instructions 
to Edmund Jennings in the next year provision was made 
for the continuance of this policy by permitting the governor 
and the judge of the land office to grant lands on the fron- 
tiers or borders at whatever rates seemed to them proper. 13 
These favors were not confined to the boundary and west- 
ern lands, however, for we find that many settlers seized an 
opportunity to take up land on the borders of Somerset and 
Worcester counties, with an indulgence of six months in 
which to pay the caution money. The judges of the land 
office spoke so favorably of this scheme that the proprietor 
empowered Governor Ogle to extend it to the rest of the 
Eastern Shore. 14 It was later found advisable to appoint 
separate officers to carry to the frontiers the facilities for 
taking up lands without coming to Annapolis. 15 Land office 
papers show special accountings by these men for lands 
disposed of below the regular rates. 16 This policy con- 
trasts with the proprietor's tendency toward increasing his 
demands ; but by enabling settlers to occupy back lands and 
make one or more crops before being called on to pay any 
charges, it must have aided greatly in the settlement of the 
frontier, and ultimately must have increased the proprietary 
income. 

In 1681 and 1684 the proprietor organized an office to 
manage the sale of his lands. Though the system was 
wrecked during the troubles of the royal period, the idea 
was retained, and after the restoration a new organization 

"Archives, vol. xxviii, pp. 25-26; Kilty, p. 230. 

13 Land Office, Warrants, Liber EE, p. 306; Kilty, p. 232. 

"Kilty, pp. 230-40. 

"Ibid., p. 76. 

"Calvert Papers, MS., Nos. 921 and 924. 



14 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

was set up. In 171 5 Philemon Lloyd was commissioned as 
deputy secretary by Thomas Beake and Charles Lowe, who 
at that time were jointly secretaries. By virtue of this com- 
mission Lloyd assumed the title of " judge of the land office," 
and appointed Edward Griffith to be register and keeper of 
the land records. Lloyd was formally commissioned by the 
proprietor four years later. He was succeeded by Edmund 
Jennings in 1732, Levin Gale in 1738, and Philip Thomas in 
1744. In 1764 two judges were appointed, and the office 
continued to be double from that time to the Revolution. 
By their commissions the judges of the land office were to 
grant warrants for taking up lands, to hear such cases as 
might arise in connection with this business, " and to decide 
them according to right reason and good conscience " and 
the several instructions sent them by the proprietor. 17 That 
is, they were to take entire charge of the issue of land 
patents, and to hear and decide all disputes that should arise 
in the course of these transactions. The instructions show, 
however, that the land office was always under close scrutiny 
by the proprietor, and that on important matters the judges 
were often required to have the advice and consent of the 
governor and the agent. 18 

Under the judges of the land office the chief officials were 
the surveyor generals and the examiner general. The sur- 
veyor general was an officer of old standing; before the close 
of the seventeenth century it had become customary to 
appoint a surveyor general for each shore. After the 
restoration of the province in 171 5, however, the person 
who held the governorship was always commissioned sur- 
veyor general of the Western Shore. 19 About the only 
duties of these officers were the appointment of a deputy 
surveyor in each county and the transmission of instruc- 
tions and warrants to and from these deputies. After the 
appointment of the examiner general the surveyor general 
even ceased to see the warrants returned by the deputies. 

"Kilty, pp. 231, 269-70. 

18 See instructions to Jennings, in Kilty, p. 232. 

"Archives, vol. xiv, p. 557. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 1 5 

In 1722 John Gresham was appointed "examiner general of 
all plats and surveys made by the several surveyors of each 
county." 20 It is probable that his and his successors' duties 
were to see that the surveys returned by the deputy sur- 
veyors were in due form, to make certain that the amounts 
included were correct, to see that the land lay in a compact 
body and was not strung out so as to include none but good 
land, and to take care that the lines coincided as nearly as 
possible with the lines of former grants so that there should 
be no small parcels of ungranted lands left interspersed 
among the granted lands. These duties were very badly 
carried out, — probably, Kilty thinks, because of a conflict of 
powers between the examiner general and the surveyor 
general in the control of the deputy surveyors. 21 

In order to take up lands through the land office the 
applicant came first to the proprietor's agent and paid the 
purchase price 22 for the amount of land required. The 
receipt for this was an order to the judges of the land office 
for a common warrant for the specified number of acres. 
The warrant, when made out by the clerk or register of the 
land office and signed and sealed by the judges, was directed 
to the surveyor general of the proper shore, and theoretically 
was delivered by him to the deputy surveyor of the county 
in which the patentees desired the land to be located. In 
practice, however, the patentee himself probably took the 
warrant to the deputy surveyor. 23 The deputy surveyor 
then surveyed the land in whatever part of the county the 
patentee desired, and having done so, returned to the exam- 
iner general the warrant, with a certificate describing the 
situation and bounds of the land. When satisfied as to the 
correctness of the certificate, the examiner affixed his 
endorsement of approval and sent it again to the land office, 

30 Kilty, p. 295; Archives, vol. xxv, p. 346. 

21 Kilty, pp. 271-72; Archives, vol. vi, p. 405. 

22 This was £2 sterling per hundred acres from 1717 to 1738 and 
£5 sterling per hundred acres from that time until the Revolution. 

23 Such was the case with a warrant mentioned in the Lower House 
Journal, August 5, 1732. The sale of warrants also shows that the 
patentees must have had possession of them. 



1 6 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

so that a patent might be drawn up. When this patent was 
sealed by the chancellor, it might be taken out by the 
patentee whenever called for, and it constituted a title to 
the land described. If, however, the land to be taken up had 
been cultivated by some one who had no right to it, or if it was 
contiguous to land already held by the applicant, the pro- 
cedure had to be varied so as to permit the officers to collect 
an extra payment to cover the value of any improvements 
there might happen to be. In this case the applicant came 
at once to the judges of the land office, and petitioned for a 
special warrant to survey certain specified land or for a 
warrant to resurvey his own land with leave to include the 
contiguous tract. This warrant then followed the same 
channels as the common warrant, with the exception that 
the deputy surveyor returned a full description of the land 
and its improvements, from which the judges of the land 
office placed a valuation on the property, and that the patent 
issued only after the patentee had settled with the agent for 
the regular purchase price and any additional sum that 
might have been demanded for the improvements. 24 Gov- 
ernor Sharpe wrote th^t he could suggest no improvements 
in this procedure, and he tells us that it was generally rec- 
ognized as the most regular and unexceptionable scheme of 
land-granting in all North America. 25 

Though the grant was not complete until the patent issued, 
yet the warrant was salable at any stage of its progress. 
Moreover, the applicant might even divide his warrant and 
sell it off in parcels, so that on the one warrant several 
patents would issue granting parts of the land to various 

24 This scheme was abused by persons who secured warrants and 
permitted them to go as far as the return of the certificate, but did 
not take out the patent. By this means the land was held, but 
neither purchase price nor quit-rents were paid. In 1730 it was pro- 
claimed that after the expiration of two years all lands held on 
such certificates longer than two years would be considered again 
open to warrant and survey. On August 13, 1732, this threat was 
proclaimed to be in effect, and several later warrants show that it 
was not idle. 

25 Archives, vol. vi, pp. 403-5 ; Case of Lord Baltimore, 1733, among 
uncatalogued state papers in the Maryland Historical Society. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 1 7 

persons. In 1712 Charles Carroll, while agent in control of 
land affairs, was instructed not to permit this petty assign- 
ment of warrants; but the practice was never stopped: 26 
Throughout the period persons frequently took out war- 
rants without any intention of taking up the land, but merely 
for the purpose of selling the warrant either as a whole or in 
parcels. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the land office was open 
to all comers, the warrant had a monetary value because of 
the caution money and the enormous fees which had to be 
paid before obtaining it. Each official mentioned above and 
many deputies and subordinates who are not mentioned were 
paid entirely by the fees of their offices, so that every pos- 
sible service in preparing and executing the papers demanded 
a separate reward. Since the land was looked upon as the 
private property of Lord Baltimore and the land office was 
regarded as his personal affair, these charges were left un- 
touched by the wholesale reductions in fees made by the 
legislature. Only now and then did the Lower House show 
a tendency to find fault with the costs of the land office. 27 
When the tobacco inspection bill was under consideration in 
1747, the legislature was about to^reduce the land office 
fees along with all others; but a reminder of the private 
nature of land affairs was sufficient to cause them to leave 
those charges as before. 28 Thus it happened that in the later 
colonial period the fees of the land office were much higher 
than those in any other branch of the government, and con- 
stituted a severe burden on the settler. In 1764 Daniel 

28 Kilty, p. 276; see also numerous assignments among the land 
warrants. 

27 Upper House Journal, October 31, 1724. 

28 "When the Inspection Law first took place & the Assembly 
were for applying their pruning Knife to the Fees of the Land-office 
etc., they were told, that this office was peculiarly his Lordship's; 
that, as he might demand what he pleased for his Lands, so might 
he regulate these Fees, as he thought fit; that it was nothing to the 
People, it was not a publick office to which They were obliged to 
apply, it being in their option whether They wou'd take up Lands, 
or not; that the Fees were to be consider' d as part of the Terms 
of the Purchase, w ch my Lord, had a right to fix" (Dulany to 
Calvert, in Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 242). 



1 8 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

Dulany wrote to Secretary Calvert, " Petitions, Draughts of 
petitions, orders, Warrants, Renewments, Recordings again, 
Examinings, Patents, Recordings again, Seals, to say noth- 
ing of Perquisites, contingent Hearings, & Lawyers fees, 
are very expensive in Maryland." He further estimated 
"that the Fees charged by the Judges or Registers of the 
Land-office, Surveyors, Examiner, Clerks, Chancellor, 
amount to an annual sum of at least, by the most moderate 
Computation, Half a Million of Tobacco." 29 

True to this policy of non-interference with the proprie- 
tor's personal affairs, the Lower House during the period 
under consideration never made a serious effort to meddle 
with the land business; but mutterings of discontent were 
frequently heard. There seems to have been woeful ig- 
norance of land matters both in England and in America, 30 
as the only documents relating to them were in private 
letters and books of instructions. In 1729, therefore, it was 
resolved by the Lower House to be a grievance that the 
terms on which land was granted were not made public, and 
it was ordered that the committee which was then tran- 
scribing the records should collect these conditions in one 
book. 31 In the same year the judicial powers of the judge 
of the land office were taken into consideration ; and though 
the house showed discontent that such wide jurisdiction 
should be exercised by one not responsible to the legislature, 
yet the matter was passed over without action. 32 In 1732 
the Lower House undertook an extended investigation of the 
method of reserving lands on warrants without issuing 
patents. The committee appointed to look into the matter 
found that several warrants issued for amounts of land vary- 
ing from ten to ten thousand acres each had been located in 
enormous tracts which were not definitely fixed, thus tying 
up all other warrants for land in those territories until the 
surveys should be made. In this way three or four men held 

29 Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 241. 

80 Lower House Journal, August 4, 1729. 

81 Ibid. 

33 Ibid., July 30, 1729. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 1 9 

options on all vacant lands on the Potomac, between the 
Monocacy and the Susquehanna, and back of the Eastern 
Shore settlements from the Pennsylvania line to Dorchester 
County. 33 Although these abuses were causing prospective 
settlers to pass on to Pennsylvania and Virginia, yet the 
matter was held over to the next session and nothing was 
done. 34 Probably mere exposure of the abuse was sufficient 
to bring it to an end. 

On one point the assembly did interfere in a small way 
with land affairs. In the erection of towns the act granting 
the charter sometimes made special provisions regarding 
town lots, fixing the prices at which they might be purchased, 
interfering with the escheat, and even abolishing the quit- 
rent. Acts of this sort led to controversies between the two 
houses of assembly, and one act for Princess Anne Town 
even received the proprietary dissent. 35 It was not very 
important for the legislature to control land affairs, because 
in the patenting of lands the interests of the proprietor and 
of the people were not very divergent. Both were benefitted 
by getting the lands taken up and settled, and difficulties 
arose chiefly through the selfishness of a ring of office- 
holders and grantees who disregarded the rights of propri- 
etor and people alike. 

One of the greatest frauds against the proprietor was in 
the matter of surplus lands. The ignorance, and often the 
knavery, of deputy surveyors caused them in many cases 
to include within the lines run much more land than the 
warrant called for. It was very easy for a surveyor to 
satisfy his conscience by the argument that a little land more 
or less cut out of the forest would be a matter of indiffer- 
ence to Lord Baltimore, who still had thousands of acres 
going to waste. It would, therefore, be folly to take any 

83 The same object was accomplished in a smaller way by failing 
to mark the boundary tree and showing different lines to persons 
who contemplated patenting adjoining land; thus land was held open 
on each side of the true grant (Chancery Record, December 26, 
1752, Liber BT No. I, p. 176. Lordship v. Spalding). 

M Lower House Journal, August 5, 1732. 

85 Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 154. 



20 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

great trouble in measuring accurate lines through difficult 
places, to refuse to oblige a friend, or even to reject a tempt- 
ing bribe. Under these conditions it was to be expected that 
the grants would show great inaccuracies of acreage. Two, 
three, five, and even ten times as much land was sometimes 
included in the survey as was called for in the grant. 86 The 
excess was generally called surplusage. 

The resumption of these surplus lands by the proprietor 
was an undertaking of considerable difficulty. In the first 
place, the surplus had to be discovered, and the owner him- 
self was probably the only one who knew of its existence. 
It was very difficult, therefore, for the proprietary author- 
ities to proceed of their own accord. It was also claimed 
that the grantees had nothing to do with the surveying, and 
that if there was any mistake, it was made by the grantor's 
own agent and the proprietor should be the loser. More- 
over, the legality of the proprietor's claim was questioned. 
The patents were always for lands within certain bounds 
containing a certain number of acres "more or less," and 
the holders of surplusage insisted that this phrase precluded 
all claims for land above the specific amount. During the 
last half of the seventeenth century the doctrine was worked 
out that these words covered not over ten per cent, one way 
or the other, 37 but it was impossible to get any such rule 
accepted by the people. 

In the early period of the proprietary government, prob- 
ably through the activity of the officials, many persons were 
brought to resurvey their land and take up the surplus ; but 
this ceased when the proprietor's grip was loosened during 
the royal period, 1689 to 1715. 38 The legal disputes at this 
time caused Lord Baltimore to submit the case to Sir 
Edward Northey, one of the crown attorneys, who returned 
an opinion unfavorable to his client. 39 With this additional 
handicap, nothing could be accomplished under the govern- 

36 Case of Lord Baltimore. 

87 Kilty, p. 199. 

38 Ibid., p. 106. 

^Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 89. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 21 

ment as it then existed; and though the claims were not 
abated, all active support of them was suspended. 

On the restoration of the province, however, it was inevit- 
able that the matter should be fought out to a conclusion. 
We shall see reasons for suspecting that an act for main- 
taining boundaries, passed in 1718, was a veiled attack on 
this claim. 40 But the proprietor's victory on this occasion 
did not embolden him immediately to take any aggressive 
action, and not until 1733 was there any decided move in the 
matter. Among the instructions to Edmund Jennings, 
judge of the land office, in that year was one commanding 
him to inform the attorney-general of any surplusage that 
might come to his attention, in order that proceedings might 
be instituted to make void the patent. In case of annul- 
ment of the patent, Jennings was to issue a new one to 
the patentee for the same number of acres that the old one 
had called for, and to regrant the surplusage to any one 
who should apply, charging for caution money whatever 
seemed proper to the chancellor (governor) and the agent, 
and reserving a quit-rent of four shillings sterling for every 
hundred acres. 41 On June 14, 1733, the very day after 
the dating of these instructions, a proclamation was issued 
calling attention to the fact that in spite of repeated warn- 
ings many persons, depending on the clause " more or less," 
had neglected to take up their surplusage. Notice was 
given that all who failed to take up such surplusage within 
two years should be proceeded against by law to vacate their 
grants as fradulently gained. The proclamation further 
threatened that no person who allowed the time to elapse 
should ever obtain a grant for such surplus ; any one discov- 
ering it should have a preemption on the land and two 
years' rent free. 42 

This was a bold attempt, and it created a stir among land- 
holders. Sir Edward Northey's opinion that surplusage 
was not recoverable by the proprietor was much made use 

40 See p. 26. 

41 Land Office, Warrants, Liber EE, p. 308; Kilty, p. 233. 
^Archives, vol. xxviii, p. 44; Kilty, p. 200. 



22 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

of among the people to assure themselves of the impossi- 
bility of that procedure. Consequently, on the advice 
of the governor, it was decided that the case as stated to 
Northey was unfair to the proprietor, 43 and it was again 
presented to a crown lawyer, this time to Thomas Lut- 
wyehe. Again, however, the decision was unfavorable; 44 
but in spite of the lawyers' opinions the proprietor went 
on to execute his threat. On January 12, 1735, 45 there was 
issued the first warrant to a discoverer of surplusage, giv- 
ing the right to resurvey the lands of another, as had been 
promised in the proclamation ; and such warrants continued 
to be issued for several years, the last being dated July 12, 
1738. They created much confusion among the holders 
of surplus lands, and caused an outcry all over the province. 46 
But the proprietary authorities braved the storm, and the 
attorney-general filed several cases in chancery for the pur- 
pose of vacating grants on the plea that they contained sur- 
plus. This seems to have increased the opposition, and in 
the legislature of 1739 it was reported as a grievance that 
the lord proprietor had issued these proclamations of per- 
nicious consequence to the peace and safety of the people, 
tending to raise law suits and dispossess families of long 
tenure. It was also considered a grievance that the attor- 
ney-general had filed his suits in chancery "to the subver- 

43 Gov. Ogle to Lord Baltimore (Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 89). 

44 Lutwyche wrote as follows on December 28, 1733: "I am of 
opinion that the grant is good, for tho where a grant is made by 
the Crown and the King is deceived in his grant, the grant is void 
in law, yet I do not know that it is so in case of a Ld. Prop, of a 
Prov. unless there may be some law made for that purpose. But 
upon the head of fraud I shd. think that if anything of that appears 
in the case, a court of equity shd. give relief as they do in other 
cases where people are imposed on, and where such collusion ap- 
pears between the officers and the grantee with intent to deceive the 
Ld. Prop. I think it is reasonable that the Ld. shd. have relief pro- 
vided a bill is brought in a reasonable time; but without voiding 
the former grants by some legal or equitable method, I do not think 
new grants can be lawfully made" (Uncatalogued state papers in 
Maryland Historical Society). 

45 Land Office, Warrants, Liber FF, p. 73- 

48 Kilty, p. 197. Kilty says that he was "informed that the 
claimants under such patents did not succeed at law." 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 23 

sion of the Landed Estate or Property of the Good People 
who have honestly paid for the same." 47 

Although very many persons were thus brought to take 
up their surplusage, 48 the general dissatisfaction proved too 
much for the proprietor. As early as 1735 he showed 
signs of weakening, for a proclamation of that year offered 
as a special favor to waive the section of the earlier procla- 
mation which had threatened that none who failed to take 
up their surplusage before June 14, 1735, should ever ob- 
tain a grant for such surplus. 49 The cessation of the issue 
of warrants to discoverers of surplusage was another ac- 
knowledgment of weakness ; and if, as Kilty was informed, 
the suits were decided against the discoverers, this fact 
must have completed the defeat of the lord proprietor. At 
all events, the attempt to push the claim to surplus lands 
was carried little further. The claim was not surrendered, 
however, for instructions to Governor Ogle in 1743 permit 
him to grant surplus, not at a rent of four shillings ster- 
ling per hundred acres according to the proclamation of 
*733> but at the same rate as in the original grant, the 
purchasers paying the purchase money, interest thereon, 
and rent from the date of the original grant. 50 Except in 
very recent grants these terms were less liberal than those 
°f x 733- Although Kilty says that after 1747, petitions for 
resurvey seldom mention the taking up of surplus land as 
a reason for the survey, 51 yet it is probable that such lands 
continued to be taken up. In 1754 Governor Sharpe wrote 
that in many counties people were so anxious to secure 
their lands against any possibility of dispute that there was 

47 Lower House Journal, May 31, 1739. 

48 In 1739 there were but 10 resurvey warrants issued between 
June 23 and December 31; in 1734 there were issued 113 such 
warrants; in 1735, by June 14, when the time limit was to expire, 
there had been issued 80, and for the whole year the number was 
105; the numbers for later years were as follows: 1736, 69; 1737, 
81; 1738, 43;! 1739, 61; 1740, 59. Most of these resurvey warrants 
were to take up surplus. 

49 Kilty, p. 201. 

60 Archives, vol. xxviii, p. 256; Kilty, p. 237. 
"Kilty, p. 198. 



24 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

no need to issue a proclamation urging them to take up sur- 
plus. 52 Later in the year Sharpe again wrote that the con- 
ditions of 1743 were too rigorous, and that if the taking 
up of surplus were permitted without paying arrears of 
rent, many persons holding large amounts would resurvey 
at once. 53 In 1756 a proclamation was issued granting 
such terms. It reminded the holders of surplus land that 
their grants might be invalidated, but as an act of leniency 
offered to permit all who applied within two years to take 
up their surplusage at the same rate as the original grants 
allowed, without paying any arrears of rent. 5 * Probably 
the increasing scarcity of lands caused their possessors to 
take more care of their titles than previously, so that no 
further efforts of this nature were ever necessary. At all 
events, we hear of no more attempts to force the land- 
holders to take out patents for their surplusage. 

Somewhat entangled with the matter of surplus lands 
was the question of boundaries. The system of granting 
lands led to no regularity in size, shape, or location of 
grants. The proprietary instructions always forbade what 
was technically known as stringing, — that is, running the 
lines so as to avoid undesirable land, — and ordered that 
the grants be run as nearly as possible in the form of a 
rectangle. 55 But in the loose government of the proprietor, 
giving orders to the judges of the land office and getting 
the deputy surveyors actually to carry them out were very 
different matters. The officers were in such close associa- 
tion that it was of little use to put one to look after another. 
Consequently grants of land assumed all sorts of fantastic 
shapes, running wherever a vein of fertile soil enticed, and 
avoiding gullies, swamps, and the undesirable parcels. To 
maintain such intricate boundaries in the midst of a virgin 
forest was a problem requiring the most painstaking care. 
The most accurate surveying and plotting and the best of 

"Archives, vol. vi, p. 38. 

63 Ibid., vol. vi, p. 92. 

M Kilty, p. 203 ; Maryland Gazette, January 22, 1756. 

66 See instructions to Edmund Jennings, in Kilty, p. 232 ff. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 2$ 

boundary stones would still have left room for disputes 
to arise, but neither of these aids to accuracy was to be 
had. The surveyors were planters of the counties, ap- 
pointed through influence with the surveyor general, and 
often with only the roughest knowledge of surveying. 
Moreover, the persons who were interested in having the 
lands strung out or underestimated were often friends, 
relatives, and men who paid well, while those who were 
interested in having the work carefully and accurately done 
were far away in Annapolis and London. The objects used 
for boundaries were frequently of a temporary nature — 
rarely a small stone set up, occasionally a natural object, 
sometimes a road, which at this period was very temporary, 
but usually a tree marked to show that it determined a line. 
In Kent County, it is said, even a pigsty and a haycock were 
used to mark the lines of surveys. With such careless 
surveying and such perishable monuments it is not surpris- 
ing that the maintenance of boundaries became a problem 
of great difficulty. 

In the general code enacted in 171 5 there was included 
an act for ascertaining the bounds of lands. A board of 
five men in each county was empowered to try all cases 
without the formalities of a court. They might inform 
themselves of the facts by hearing testimony, by visiting the 
lands, or by any other convenient method. Review of 
their decision could be obtained only by petitioning the gov- 
ernor for a special commission, on which the governor might 
appoint a member of the council or of the provincial court 
and two persons skilled in surveying to rehear the case. 56 
The act was to run three years, but it was repealed and a 
new act was passed in 17 18, which was somewhat similar 
to the one of 171 5, except that it provided nine commis- 
sioners in each county, from whose decision there lay only 
the ever permissible appeal to England. 57 The object of 
this law, as expressed in the preamble, was to provide "A 

68 Bacon, Laws of Maryland, 1715, ch. 45; text given in Kilty, 
app. xvi. 
87 Lower House Journal, May 1, 2, 1718. 



26 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

Remedy for the more Exact Settling the bounds of all such 
Antient Surveys as have been darkly & Unskill fully Ex- 
prest," to prevent the great cost of trials by juries in the 
provincial courts and the frequent appeals to the superior 
courts, and to provide against the necessity that the poorer 
inhabitants were sometimes under of giving up their lands 
rather than undertake the expenses of a journey to An- 
napolis and prolonged litigation. 

The storm which arose over the act indicated that there 
must have been more at stake than the convenience of a 
few suitors. Philemon Lloyd speaks in a letter to London 
of the discussion the law was causing in the province and 
of the many high-handed decisions by commissioners from 
which there was no appeal, and suggests that the finality 
of the commissioners' decision might affect the claims of the 
proprietor to any surplus lands that should happen to be in- 
cluded within the lines of a tract. 58 It is not impossible 
that the proposal was a dark scheme to attain this end. At 
any rate, the proprietor vetoed the bill, 59 thus leaving the 
colony without any special regulation of boundaries. As 
the veto message had found fault especially with the lack 
of appeal, the Lower House at once proceeded to remedy 
this defect; and in spite of the opposition of the Upper 
House succeeded in securing a special commission of re- 
view in each county, thus avoiding all schemes that would 
throw the final decision into the hands of the regular 
courts. 60 A great number of petitions for relief against 
unjust decisions by the commissioners, which had already 
accumulated before the house, were also referred to these 
commissioners of review. 61 This act, like the former, re- 
ceived the dissent of the proprietor; and although the 

58 Calvert Papers, No. 2, pp. 1-20. 

59 Lower House Journal, April 21, 1720. 

60 Kilty, app. xvi. 

61 Lower House Journal, April 18, 20, October 14, 1720. Notice 
especially the complaint against Thomas Addison of Prince George 
County and his indignant replies, in Lower House Journal, April 
13, 1720. 



THE GRANTING OF LAND 2J 

Lower House undertook to support it by an address to Lord 
Baltimore, 62 the latter held firm. 

If it was the purpose of the Lower House during these 
controversies to aim a blow at the proprietor's claims to sur- 
plus lands, the purpose must have been given up when it 
was found that the address to Lord Baltimore brought no 
results. The next year, 1722, a penalty of five thousand 
pounds of tobacco was imposed on any one interfering with 
boundary trees; 63 and the following year, 1723, without any 
apparent friction, an act was passed permitting the county 
courts, on the petition of any one seized of lands, to grant 
a commission of four freeholders, who might examine wit- 
nesses or inform themselves in any other way concerning 
the proper bounds of the lands in dispute, and who should 
record their findings among the county records. 64 These 
records were then final evidence in all land cases. This act 
continued throughout the colonial period, and the numerous 
records of such commissions testify not only to the smooth 
working of the law itself, but also to the enormous number 
of boundary disputes which arose during the period. 65 

82 Lower House Journal, August 5, 1712. 

83 Bacon, 1722, ch. 8. 

84 Ibid., 1723, ch. 8. 

65 In 1750 and at various times thereafter bills were introduced 
to establish the boundaries of lands by means of processions. It is 
impossible to say what was the object of trying to revive this quaint 
custom, but the bill always received a prompt defeat in the Upper 
House. Coming at this time of controversy, the bill strongly sug- 
gests some covert attack on the proprietary privilege (Lower House 
Journal, May II, 1750, May 5, 1761, etc.). 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHARGES ON LAND 

The chief purpose of the proprietor's policy was to create 
a permanent revenue from the province. His land grants, 
therefore, were not in fee simple, but retained certain per- 
manent liabilities. These liabilities were the escheat, the 
alienation fine, and the quit-rent. 

The lord proprietor met less determined opposition to 
his claim to escheats than to his claim to surplus lands. 
The charter gave Lord Baltimore an undoubted right to all 
escheats, but it did not define what an escheat was. In Eng- 
land at this time lands could escheat only in two ways — by 
failure of heirs, and by attainder of blood; but Baltimore 
seems to have extended the escheat to include also for- 
feiture by suicide or treason and failure to conform to the 
conditions of the grant. Failure of heirs was also given 
broad interpretation, and was made to exclude certain rela- 
tives who would ordinarily be considered very close heirs. 1 
Cases are found which would indicate that without a will a 
father could not inherit from a son or a man from his 
wife. 2 These may be exceptional cases, however, as there 
probably never was a definite rule laid down to govern the 
subject. Whether controlled by any definite regulations 
or not, escheats must have returned a large revenue to the 
proprietor. A new country such as Maryland during the 
first half of the eighteenth century must have contained an 
exceptionally large proportion of persons without any 

1 Kilty, in referring to the cases which constituted failure of heirs, 
says: "What they were can be judged only by inference from 
particular cases, for no precise instructions from the proprietary 
on that subject are to be found on record, and the laws of the 
province are silent about it. I should suppose that if a man died 
without leaving heirs of the whole blood in the direct descending 
line his lands were held liable to escheat" (p. 175). 

3 Kilty, pp. 175, 184. 

28 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 29 

known relatives ; and this, coupled with the numerous situa- 
tions which occasioned land to escheat, gave rise to the great 
number of such cases appearing in the records. 3 

Like surplusage, escheats were sometimes hard for the 
land office to find. Whenever they came to the attention 
of the proprietor's agent or other officers, they would be 
proceeded on by the attorney-general ; but many cases never 
came to the attention of such officers. In order to lead to 
their discovery, therefore, it was customary to allow the 
discoverer the preemption of the land at two thirds its 
value; 4 and after the early part of 1736 a quit-rent of only 
four shillings sterling 5 was reserved, though common lands 
continued for two years longer to bear a quit-rent of ten 
shillings sterling. Though many escheats are recorded, it 
is difficult to say how great an effect these offers produced. 

Notwithstanding the large number of escheats occurring 
all over the province and the very questionable character of 
the proceedings when considered in the light of the English 
law of the day, opposition to the process developed late. 
Not until nearly 1760 was there any great protest. Bordley, 
writing on July 4 of that year, speaks of " Restoring those 
Rights to ye Same state of Security in which they were not 
long since; for 'tis but lately that they have been . . . 
attacked." The same letter describes a trial before the 
provincial court in June, 1759, from which it appears that 
in fact some of the judges on that bench were inclined 
toward the new doctrine of the illegality of escheats. The 
lawyers opposing the escheat boldly declared, first, that the 
death of a father and a grandfather seized of the lands 

8 See the numerous regrants of escheat land shown in the warrant 
books at the land office. 

* See instructions to the judge of the land office, in Kilty, p. 234. 
See also proclamation of June 17, 1733, in Archives, vol. xxviii, p. 
45. Kilty says that as the improvements on the land were all valued 
and added into the purchase price by the officials, this offer might 
easily be defeated if the officials saw fit to value these too highly 
(p. 174). For an instance that failed, see Archives, vol. vi, p. 13. 
This also shows the hardship and confusion which enforcement of 
escheats sometimes caused. 

5 Land Office, Warrants, Liber FF, p. 118. 



30 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

which in each case descended to the son constituted a bar 
to an escheat which had occurred before the grandfather 
came into possession; second, that the receipt of quit-rents 
from a person seized of lands was a bar to an escheat 
which had occurred before he came into possession; and 
third, that possession of lands for twenty years was a bar 
to escheat. Through very irregular proceedings and the 
favor of the jury the opposition won its case. The anti- 
proprietary party made a great effort to show that this de- 
cision completely broke down the proprietary claims to 
escheats, and the proprietary party was equally strenuous 
in showing that it was decided on grounds which did not 
affect that claim. 6 The latter party seems to have pre- 
vailed, for the escheats were enjoyed by the proprietor on 
down to the Revolution, but probably in the face of an ever 
increasing opposition. 

Another liability which Maryland lands suffered through 
the feudal character of the province was the alienation fine. 
Since the year 1658 patents had carried a clause requiring 
a fine equal to one year's rent on every alienation, or trans- 
fer, of the land. During the first twelve years of the period 
under consideration these fines, along with the quit-rents, 
were commuted for a tobacco duty; 7 but from 1732 on to 
the Revolution they were always collected wherever possible. 

The collection of alienation fines would have offered little 
difficulty had it been necessary to record all transfers of 
land, for in that case the exchanges could easily have been 
taken from the land records and charges could have been 
entered against the land. Indeed, the clerks themselves 
might have been instructed not to record an instrument 
until the fine was paid ; but the state of the law was not so 
favorable. In 171 5 an act was passed for the enrollment 
of transfers, by which all deeds of bargain and sale, to have 
binding legality, had to be recorded. This law was in force 
in 1733 when, at the expiration of the commutation act, 

"Bordley to Sharpe (Maryland Historical Society, portfolio iv, 
no 53). 

See below, pp. 34-39. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 31 

alienation fines again became due; but since the enrollment 
act mentioned only deeds of bargain and sale, the people 
soon resorted to various schemes of transferring land by- 
instruments of a different nature, which needed no record- 
ing and did not, therefore, betray to the collectors the fact 
that there had been an exchange. By such means the pay- 
ment of alienation fines was so frequently avoided that the 
claim yielded little profit to the proprietor. 

Though the people avoided payment of alienation fines, 
they seem only once to have set on foot a popular move- 
ment against them. About 1735, when efforts were being 
made to squeeze out surplusage and to increase the quit- 
rents, a similar effort was put forth to extend the alienation 
fine to all transfers of land by devise. All of these partic- 
ular transfers had to pass through the hands of the com- 
missaries, thus furnishing convenient data from which to 
make up the collectors' accounts, and offering a tempting 
field for the extension of the proprietary claims. Sharpe 
ascribes to Daniel Dulany, the elder, the first suggestion 
that the proprietor was legally entitled to these payments. 8 
On somebody's suggestion, at any rate, the proprietor, about 
1735, ordered his agent to collect fines from all devises of 
land. This order created opposition in the province; some 
refused to pay; and in 1739 the committee of grievances 
of the Lower House of Assembly reported these demands 
as an innovation and a grievance. 9 Three years later the 
agent was instructed to forego this claim, in consequence, 
the colonists believed, of an unfavorable opinion rendered to 
the proprietor by some lawyer of England. 10 Thus ended 
the greatest controversy that ever arose over the alienation 
fine in Maryland. 11 

8 Archives, vol. ix, p. 504. Sharpe is clearly wrong in dating this 
suggestion 1742; it is evidently a guess. 

9 Lower House Journal, May 28, 1739. 

10 Archives, vol. xxviii, p. 291 ; Kilty, p. 239 ; Archives, vol. ix, p. 504. 

11 J. W. Thomas seems to have mistaken the alienation fine on 
devise for a heriot, and concludes from this instruction that the 
heriot had existed in Maryland down to this time (Chronicles of 
Colonial Maryland, p. 94). 



32 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

After this defeat the proprietor's insistence on alienation 
dues seems to have lagged a little. Fines were still col- 
lected as in the past, but for some years there was no special 
effort to increase the revenue from this source. In 1754 
Sharpe suggested the novel and ill-omened scheme of a par- 
liamentary stamp tax as the only means of ever bringing 
all deeds to enrollment, for the assembly, he said, would 
never bring this about. 12 Some time during the later fifties, 
however, Daniel Dulany, the younger, wrote to Secretary 
Calvert suggesting that a much greater revenue could be 
obtained from alienation fines. 13 The elder proprietor, with 
his experience of the early opposition, had by this time 
passed away, and Frederick was persuaded by Dulany's 
letter to assert his claims even at the risk of incurring the 
popular displeasure. He seems to have supposed that if 
all the fines were paid they would have amounted to as 
much as the quit-rents, and he wrote to Sharpe in 1761 to 
push their collection, even ordering that fines on devises be 
again demanded. 14 Dulany himself could not accept the 
advanced idea put forth, and he sacrificed much of the 
favor of Lord Baltimore by denying that a non-payment of 
alienation fines gave the proprietor a legal right to reentry 
on the land. Fortunately for Frederick, he was represented 
in the colony by officers wiser than himself; and these 
officers, on this occasion standing between him and the 
people, prevented all attempts at a rigorous enforcement 
of the policy concerning alienation fines. 

After the victory over fines on devises, opposition to 
alienation fines seems not to have been a very popular move- 
ment. The people felt the need of a compulsory enroll- 
ment of deeds, and on several occasions, notwithstanding the 
opportunity thus given to discover alienations, passed laws 

13 Archives, vol. vi, p. 99. 

13 Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 196. 

"Archives, vol. ix, p. 503. Baltimore's idea of the amount of the 
fines appears ridiculous when we remember that the fine was equal 
to one year's quit-rent, so that all the land in the colony must change 
hands each year to make the fines equal the rents. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 33 

for this purpose. In each case, however, the bill was in 
some obscure way killed by amendments in the Upper 
House. 15 The bill to this effect brought forward in 1764 
seems to have been in every way acceptable to the proprie- 
tary party, but when it came into the Upper House, the 
councillors, in spite of Dulany's opposition, insisted on a 
bold amendment making the payment of the alienation fine 
essential to the validity of all transfers. The Lower House, 
as Dulany had predicted, promptly refused to concur. 16 
Thus from greed, or from a blind insistence on what they 
thought their rights, a favorable opportunity for making the 
alienation fines yield their full value was thrown away. 
The policy of the Lower House in this respect seems always 
to have been to leave the proprietor unmolested in collecting 
what fines he could, but to do nothing that would recognize 
his right or aid him in its exercise. 

In some ways closely connected with. the alienation fine 
was the final burden on Maryland lands — the quit-rent. 
From the very beginning the proprietor had reserved to 
himself a perpetual quit-rent from all lands granted. We 
have seen 17 that in successive conditions of plantation the 
rent was gradually raised from twenty pounds of wheat to 
four shillings sterling, then to ten shillings sterling for 
every hundred acres, being finally reduced to four shillings 
sterling again ; and that it was left to the discretion of the 
agent and judges of the land office to ask more when the 
lands would bear it. It is now in order to examine the 
quit-rent with regard to methods of collection, the hardships 
which it brought upon the people, and some of its results on 
the colony. 

Although the quit-rents were always 18 payable in sterling 
money, the lack of specie during the seventeenth century 

"Lower House Journal, May 20, 1756; May 5, 1761. It is not 
safe to conclude that in each case the Upper House was pursuing 
the same stupid policy as in 1764; the Lower House may have 
framed bills too obnoxious to pass. 

*• Calvert Papers, No. 2, pp. 234-37 ; Archives, vol. xiv, p. 174. 

17 See above, p. 9. 

13 A few early grain rents must be excepted. 

3 



34 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

made it necessary to accept them in tobacco; and this 
brought up unavoidable disputes as to the value of tobacco. 
In 1671 the proprietor agreed in payment of alienation fines 
and quit-rents to accept tobacco at the rate of twopence 
per pound in consideration of a duty of one shilling per 
hogshead on all tobacco exported. This agreement ran on 
until the death of Charles, Lord Baltimore, in 171 5. Be- 
cause of the increase in the value of quit-rents and an en- 
largement in the size of the tobacco hogshead the duty was 
then raised to eighteen pence sterling per hogshead. This 
continued until 17 17 when, at the suggestion of Governor 
Hart, Lord Guilford, who was guardian of the young Lord 
Baltimore, intimated that a duty of two shillings sterling on 
every hogshead of tobacco exported would be accepted as a 
full discharge of all quit-rents and alienation fines. This 
offer was accepted by the Lower House, and a bill em- 
bodying the agreement was quickly passed. 19 

Although on the face of it this agreement seems a great 
sacrifice by the proprietor (and it was always spoken of 
by the proprietary officials as such), yet the enormous diffi- 
culty, expense, and loss in the collection of a few pounds 
of tobacco each from several thousand people scattered over 
the whole colony account for the willingness of the pro- 
prietor to exchange his claims for a fixed duty, with the 
collection of which he had nothing to do. We have no 
figures showing the total amount of quit-rents due at this 
time, nor the amounts collected either immediately before 
or immediately after the agreement ; but it is certain that no 
proprietor had ever before received so great an annual 
income as was received after the passing of the act. 20 The 
proprietor, consequently, seemed very willing to renew the 
bargain on each of its earlier expirations. 21 About 1725, 
however, persons represented to him that the rents due 

19 B. W. Bond, jr., "The Quit Rent in Maryland," in Maryland 
Historical Magazine, December, 1910, p. 351. 

20 Address of Governor Hart (Upper House Journal, 1720). 

21 Like many colonial laws, it ran for only a limited period. It was 
renewed in 1720, 1721, 1723, 1726, 1729, and 1730. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 35 

amounted to above £6000, while the net receipts from the 
duty were less than £3000, and he seems to have become a 
little restive concerning it. Governor Charles Calvert's 
speech in 1726 bears a trace of this uneasiness in that it 
reminded the Lower House that Lord Baltimore gave up 
half his revenue by accepting the agreement, but it also 
stated that for the good of the people he was willing to 
renew it. 22 As the time for renewal in 1729 approached, 
the restiveness increased, and produced a strong letter from 
Governor Benedict Leonard Calvert, which seems to have 
convinced the proprietor of the advantages of his bargain. 23 

22 Governor's address (Upper House Journal, July 14, 1726). 

23 This letter reads in part as follows : " I shall now trouble you 
with a Word or two, upon the General situation of Affairs in 
Government, that I may receive your Advices and Instructions in 
the fullest manner; and I think by taking a View of the relation 
the people bear to you and you to them, in the points of Interest, 
I shall best Explain myself to you; You are their Proprietary of the 
Soil, and as such, the people from time to time owe you and may 
be Compelled to pay you Rents and fines; you and they have for 
some years past compounded for their Value another Way. The 
people, grow Jealous, that you have too good a Bargain; you on 
the other Side, have been I believe informed that the Amount of 
Yr. Rent Roll exceeds vastly, the Equivalent you Accept of. I 
must deal so Candidly, as to give my Opinion, that their seems 
Error in Computation on Both sides. It is Certain the people Could 
no ways so Easily, so insensibly pay their Rents as by this method 
now they are in. The Poor and Orphans, scarce bear any share in 
the present payments. The Husbandmen, from the Produce in 
Stock and Tillage pay nothing, which is a great Incouragement to 
Husbandry, so necessary and beneficial to a Young Country. In 
short the traders who purchase Tobacco, bear the greatest share, 
from the Shoulders of the planter; and yet it is as nothing to such 
trader; for as Mr. Bennett, a great and knowing trader here Ob- 
serves, the trader gets as much for his goods as he Can, in Tobacco, 
having Allways the whip hand of the Planters necessitys for Cloath 
and Tools ; and when people are aiming at getting such Advances on 
their goods as from 100 to 200 p r . Cent, the Value of 2 s . p r . Hogs- 
head Duty is scarce Calculated or even thought of. Thus in Gen- 
eral is the Composition easy and almost Insensible to the people. 

" To you I think it of a like Nature, since first the payments are 
regular and good, with the least trouble so much money can be 
Collected with. I Do not believe your Rent Roll, can amount to 
above 6000 p r . Ann. which could it be Collected, great Defalcations 
must be allowed for Charges and Losses in the Collection. It 
would be allmost impracticable to get Bills of Exchange for a 
regular remittance of the produce; if they could be got, it Could 
not be under less than 8 or 10 p r . Cent premium. 

" The Philadelphians frequently are obliged to give near that 



36 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

From this time to the expiration of the act the proprietor 
was always ready to renew it. 

Although the proprietor gained by the bargain, the people 
probably did not lose. In the first place, the duty was laid 
so indirectly 24 that it was scarcely felt, while the old method 
of payment required an actual outlay and inconvenience on 
the part of the planter. In amount, moreover, the planters 
probably paid less than they had done before, 25 and certainly 
less than they would have paid had the rents been collected 
in sterling according to the grants, or in tobacco at its 
market price. It was estimated that in 1724 the total of 
rent due was about £5225 12s., while the average duty for 
seven years netted only ^2855 12s. 26 We find, however, 
that from the very beginning the people were somewhat dis- 
satisfied, and feared that the proprietor had the best of the 
bargain. 27 The main objection on the part of the people at 
the early period of the arrangement might justly have arisen 
from its inequalities. The local merchants and others who 
shipped large amounts of tobacco without possessing the 
land from which it was raised might very well have com- 
plained that the duty was negligible on the small quan- 
tities in which they often received their tobacco, so that it 
was impossible to shift the burden to the shoulders of 

premium for Bills; and the greater the Demand for Bills would 
grow, the Higher Premium would be Exacted. But alass, they 
Cannot be Collected, there is not money enough here to be got 
to make regular payments from time to time, So that your officers 
must take Corn, Wheat, Beef, Pork, Tobacco or some Commodity 
of the Country, the Conversion whereof into money, and from 
money into Bills, must be a Vexatious, Expensive, and allmost an 
Endless an Insuperable task. I shall say no more at present, but 
pray for the Continuance of the Agreement" (Calvert Papers, No. 
2, pp. 72, 73)- 

24 It was paid by the merchant to the collectors and deducted from 
the planter's tobacco returns. 

25 Governor Calvert lays stress on this in his argument for re- 
newal. 

20 Acts of Assembly, 1730; Bond, p. 357. 

^Governor Hart says that no proprietor ever received a greater 
income " nor were ever the Tenants better pleased or more easy in 
their Possessions" (Upper House Journal, Speech, 1720). We 
must allow for Hart's vanity, as he was very proud of having 
brought about this arrangement. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 37 

the actual land-owner from whom the rents were due. 28 
A second objection might have come from the planters who 
tilled all their land. These were called upon by the act to 
help pay quit-rents on the large tracts of forest which their 
wealthier neighbors held for speculation. 

How much these classes really complained it is impos- 
sible to say. The complaints which come to light are of a 
different nature. Governor Hart, when recommending the 
renewal of the act in 1720, spoke of " the designing Insinua- 
tions of Its Self Interested accusers who on pretence of 
Friendship would impose on his Lordship to his own & the 
Country's damage." 29 If we can draw any conclusion from 
these words, it must be that already there were persons in 
the colony who thought the proprietor had the best of the 
bargain and who " would impose on his Lordship " by re- 
ducing the duty. The same sentiment is shown by a com- 
plaint of the Lower House later in this session that the pro- 
prietor had a better opportunity than the people to judge of 
the bargain. 30 When the renewal bill was drawn, some 
vital change was made which so altered the nature of the 
old act that the Upper House insisted on its being limited 
to a single year, 31 in order, probably, to give the proprietor 
an opportunity to reject it if he wished. 

28 In Sotweed Redivivus (Maryland Historical Society, Fund Pub- 
lication No. 36, p. 46), written in 1730, occurs the following passage 
(the italics are mine) : — 

" A Tax equivalent has laid 
Upon Tobacco, must be paid, 
By Merchants, that the same Export, 
In Bills, before it quits the Port. 
But what is worst for Patent Lands, 
By others held, it Debtor, stands. 

I must confess, 'tis just and true, 
That Caesar should be paid his Due: 
But; one Man to monopolize 
More Land, than yet he occupies, 
And Foreigners the Quit-Rents pay, 
In Sterling Coin, is not fair Play: 
A Grievance ought to be suppress'd, 
By Ways and Means, Caesar knows best." 

29 Address of Governor Hart (Upper House Journal, 1720). 

30 Lower House* Journal, April 8, 1720. 

81 Ibid., April 20, 1720; Archives, vol. ix, pp. 542-43. 



38 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

With this unpropitious beginning, the commutation act 
entered on a career of ever decreasing popularity. Gover- 
nor Calvert speaks of the increasing jealousy of the people. 32 
The act, however, passed safely through the renewal periods 
of 1721, 1723, and 1726. Between 1728 and 1730 repeated 
efforts were made to pass a bill reducing the number of 
tobacco plants that might be attended by a single taxable. 
Since this would naturally decrease the amount of tobacco 
shipped and thus affect the proprietor's equivalent for quit- 
rents, the Upper House always insisted on a recompense for 
the loss. In dealing with this recompense the Lower House 
showed considerable indifference toward the whole com- 
mutation arrangement. In 1728 it was argued that recom- 
pense was just, but that the proper time to deal with it was 
the next year, when the act should come up for renewal. 33 
The next year, however, the compensation was refused, 
and in a message the Lower House said indifferently that the 
proprietor could do as he pleased concerning the bargain. 3 * 
As the tobacco bill failed to pass, the quit-rent renewal 
stood unmolested. The whole matter was fought over 
again in 1730 when, after much debate and several efforts to 
appropriate funds which were used by the proprietor for 
other purposes, the Lower House finally agreed to make up 
any deficiency so that the total revenue received by the 
proprietor should amount to at least £2855 12s. sterling, 
which had been its average during the past seven years. 35 

Before the return of the time for renewal, the Lower 
House adopted the rule of recording its votes by yeas and 
nays, which permits us to analyze more closely the feelings 
of the province toward quit-rents. When the commuta- 
tion act came up for renewal in 1732, it was passed by a 
vote of 26 to 20. Of the affirmative votes, 21 were from the 
Eastern Shore and 5 from the Western; of the negative 
votes 3 were from the Eastern Shore and 17 from the 

33 See above, p. 35, n. 23. 

33 Lower House Journal, October 23, 1728. 

34 Ibid., July 30, August 2, 1729. 

35 Laws of 1730. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 39 

Western. 36 The next year (for the renewal had been lim- 
ited to a single year) the act was defeated by a vote of 21 
to 26, 16 Eastern Shore and 5 Western Shore delegates 
voting for it, and 6 Eastern Shore and 20 Western Shore 
delegates voting against it. 37 This decided sectionalism can 
be easily accounted for by the different products of the two 
shores. It will be shown later that the Eastern Shore was 
beginning by this time to abandon the cultivation of tobacco 
for that of grain, so it is not surprising that Western Shore 
tobacco producers objected to having their crop taxed to 
pay the quit-rents of the Eastern Shore grain growers. 
How long this antagonism had been the root of the dissatis- 
faction with the quit-rent commutation it is impossible to 
say. There are reasons for believing that throughout most 
of the Eastern Shore the cultivation of tobacco did not 
begin to decline until some time between 1720 and 1730. If 
such is the case, this could not have caused the uneasiness 
with the quit-rent bargain which appears as early as 1720. 
But at all events these votes and similar ones in subsequent 
years 38 make it almost certain that the divergent interests 
of the producers of grain and tobacco had more to do with 
the later difficulties and final defeat of the commutation than 
had the suspicions that the proprietor had the best of the 
bargain. 39 

38 Lower House Journal, July 25, 1732. 

37 Ibid., April 3, 1733- 

88 The crux of the question came to a vote in 1735 when "The 
Question was put whether in an application to be made to the 
Lord Baltimore about farming the Rents it shall be proposed to 
charge Tobacco with any further duty for that purpose or not. Re- 
solved in the Negative," 21 to 23. All the negative votes were 
from the Western Shore, and all but one of the affirmative votes 
from the Eastern Shore. The one Western Shore affirmative vote 
was by Richard Francis, a delegate from Annapolis, who had a 
brother in the Eastern Shore delegation (Lower House Journal, 
April 15, 1735). 

89 Strangely enough, N. D. Mereness fails to catch this point. He 
calls attention to the fact that the four western counties and 
Annapolis furnished 17 out of the 26 votes that defeated renewals 
in 1733; but he then suggests that these counties were those least 
adapted to tobacco culture, and concludes that it was a matter of 
frontier opposition to the proprietary (Maryland as a Proprietary 
Province, p. 82). 



40 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

When the revenue bill was seen to be defeated, the pro- 
prietor proceeded at once to reorganize the system of col- 
lection, which had fallen to pieces during sixteen years of 
disuse. The governor was instructed either to farm out 
the rents for a sum of from twenty to twenty-five per cent, 
less than the total of the rent-rolls, or to appoint in each 
county, if he thought best, a receiver who should collect 
the rents on a commission of ten per cent, of the amount 
collected. In either case such security as met the approval 
of the agent and the attorney-general should be required. 
Over these farmers and receivers was placed one general 
rent-roll keeper for each shore, who was to receive five per 
cent, of the total rent-rolls of those counties of his shore 
which were farmed out, and five per cent, of the amount 
collected in those counties which were collected directly. 40 
The duty of the general rent-roll keepers seems to have been 
to make up each year rent-rolls for the several counties of 
their shores and transmit them to the farmers and receivers. 
As this required that they keep track of all changes in the 
ownership of land and all new grants, resurveys, and the 
like, the judges of the land-office were specifically instructed 
to send them each year a list of all such transactions. More- 
over, since alienation fines were to be collected by the same 
organization, the county clerks were required to furnish 
the rent-roll keepers with a list of all alienations. 41 All 
these officers — general rent-roll keepers, farmers, and re- 
ceivers — were to be under the general supervision and con- 
trol of the governor and the agent. Under this scheme St. 
Mary's, Charles, and Prince George's counties were soon 
taken to farm by one company, and Baltimore and Anne 
Arundel counties by another, 42 but beyond this it is not 
known which counties were farmed out and which were col- 
lected. 

40 Archives, vol. xxviii, pp. 67, 68. This is the interpretation which 
Ogle put upon the instructions, but they read as if the proprietor had 
intended that one system of collection or the other should extend 
over the entire province. 

41 Instructions to Jennings, in Land Office, Warrants, Liber EE, 
pp. 306-9; Kilty, pp. 232-34. 

^Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 89. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 4 1 

According to the provisions of the grants, quit-rents were 
payable only in sterling money. It was sixty-two years, 
however, since this had been legally enforcible, and in 
actual practice it had never been strictly carried out. In 
1733 all laws on the subject expired; and since there was 
more money in the province at that time than there had 
been before 1671, the proprietor determined to demand pay- 
ments in specie. This requirement, when the system settled 
down into working order, proved to be the undoing of the 
people. Though there was more specie in the province than 
ever before, there was not yet enough to make it easy to 
collect between £4000 and £5000 each year. Persons accus- 
tomed to have all their dealings in tobacco and barter found 
it difficult to procure even the few shillings a year neces- 
sary for the payment of their rents, and those in possession 
of foreign gold and sterling money took occasion to demand 
excessive exchange from persons in need of it. 43 Benedict 
Calvert did not much exaggerate the difficulty when he 
wrote that not enough money could be found in the prov- 
ince to pay the rents, and that the collectors would be 
obliged to accept grain, tobacco, pork, and other country 
produce. 44 

The difficulty in procuring money formed the basis of 
nearly all the complaints raised by the Lower House against 
the collection of quit-rents. In 1735 both houses of the leg- 
islature agreed that the inhabitants were under great diffi- 
culties in the payment of their quit-rents, 45 and an address 
to the governor prepared in that year says that the discon- 
tinuance of the commutation act was " attended with greater 
Difficulties and Inconveniences than could have been fore- 
seen ; Which Difficulties Must Encrease in proportion to the 
Scarcity of Gold or Silver in the Country." 46 An address 

48 See the complaint of one Hooper of Dorchester County, who 
in 1753 "was obliged to take up Sterling Money, at the high Ex- 
change of one Hundred per cent" (Lower House Journal, October 
9, I7S3). 

See above, p. 34, n. 23. 
"Upper House Journal, April 15, 16, 1735. 

49 Lower House Journal, April 19, 1735. 



42 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

to the proprietor repeated this idea. 47 Throughout the 
period during which this question was under discussion no 
objections seem ever to have been raised to the amount of 
the rent, but only to the scarcity of specie and the methods 
sometimes used in collection. 

Not only was there difficulty in procuring coin, but the 
rates at which it was received were unsatisfactory. In 
March, 1735, the proprietor gave orders that in all payments 
to him foreign and cut gold coins, which passed current in 
Maryland at £4 2s. 6d. per ounce, should not be rated above 
£3 ios., leaving a margin to cover both the over valuation 
of gold and the premium on bills to transmit it to England. 48 
The demand that the expenses of transmission to England 
be borne by the people was in no way a part of the bargain 
and was entirely illegal. Possibly complaints against this 
exorbitant rate reached England, for later in the year for- 
eign gold was put up to £3 14s. 6d., 49 and later to £3 16s. 
9d., 50 placing it, as was said, at the rate of exchange which 
it bore in London. 51 Notwithstanding these advances, in 
1737, in the course of an investigation into the collection of 
quit-rents with special reference to the farmers, the Lower 
House passed a strong general resolution that the extor- 
tion of foreign gold and silver at any rate under the sterling 
value was illegal and oppressive. 52 Shortly afterwards the 
agent was instructed to receive gold at £3 17s. 6d. per ounce ; 
silver was also raised from 5s. to 5s. 3d. 53 Probably to help 
allay further discontent, the governor in his speech at the 
opening of the next session of the assembly commented on 
this favorable rate. 54 These terms became fixed by custom, 

47 Upper House Journal, April 23, 1735. 

48 Calvert Papers, MS., No. 278. 
48 Ibid., No. 295^. 

60 Ibid, No. 278. 

"The exact value of this currency cannot be determined, as it 
consisted of various foreign coins of different alloys. An ounce 
of pure gold, however, was worth, then as now, a little over £3 
17s. 9d. In 1735 the proprietor wrote that foreign gold was then 
worth in London £3 17s. 9d. 

"Lower House Journal, May 17, 1737. 

63 Calvert Papers, MS, No. 295^, p. 29. 

"Upper House Journal, May 3, 1738. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 43 

and remained unchanged throughout the period under dis- 
cussion. 55 

An aggravation of the difficulty was caused by the 
methods employed by some of the farmers. In 1737 so 
many complaints were laid before the committee of griev- 
ances of the Lower House that a long investigation was 
made, by which it was shown that in the two farmed dis- 
tricts — Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, and St. 
Mary's, Charles, and Prince George's counties — foreign 
money, which constituted the main element of the currency 
of the province, was regularly taken at about two thirds of 
its value, sterling bills of exchange were discounted at two 
and one half per cent. 56 to cover possible losses and were 
required to have iron-clad security, and paper money was 
accepted only at a two hundred per cent, advance. These 
rates were forced on the people by distraints, with heavy 
costs for the slightest objection or delay. On some occa- 
sions sterling coin was insisted on, and when it was found 
impossible to procure this medium, distraint was immedi- 
ately laid. Moreover, shameful relations were shown to 
exist between the farmers of the revenue and the sheriffs, by 
which they divided the sheriffs' fees accumulated by these 
oppressions. 57 On the report of this committee the farmers 
were reprimanded by the house, and the governor was 
asked to prosecute them. 58 

From this time until 1754 complaints against the tax- 
farmers are numerous. In 1747 the sheriff and the farmer 
of Charles County were accused of oppression. 59 In 1748 
it was brought to the attention of the governor and the 
council that the farmers and the sheriff of Frederick County 
had been regularly collecting illegal fees, but they were let 
off with a mere recommendation to do better. 60 In 1749 

65 Archives, vol. xiv, p. 213. 

M It must also be remembered that bills of exchange were usually 
at from five to ten per cent, premium. 
"Lower House Journal, May 12, 1737. 
68 Ibid., May 19, 1737- 
59 Ibid., June 9, I747 : .. 
80 Archives, vol. xxviii, pp. 420-24. 



44 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

the committee of grievances of the Lower House investi- 
gated charges of illegal distraints in Baltimore County, and 
William Young, the farmer, received a reprimand from 
the house and a bill of costs amounting to £7 2s. Illegal 
rates for gold were also complained of at this time. 61 
Young seems to have been an habitual offender, for in both 
1753 and 1754 complaints are heard against him. 62 In 1753 
the receivers of rents seem to have been trying to collect 
arrears of old standing, and Thomas Muir, the receiver in 
Dorchester County, was accused of overcharging and de- 
manding excessive bond in a suit for rents overdue since 
171 5. The governor was again asked to prosecute, but it is 
doubtful whether he ever complied. 63 

Such complaints from the assembly and the province 
in general brought the agent, Edward Lloyd, in 1754 to re- 
quire all farmers and receivers of quit-rents to advertise, by 
putting up notices in the most public places, at what rate 
they would receive foreign coin in lieu of sterling. 6 * This 
scheme, by merely informing the people of their rights, pre- 
vented any possibility of fraud in the rates. It would have 
been impossible to publish any rate above that set by the 
proprietor's instructions, and few were so ignorant as to 
permit themselves to be imposed upon by any departure 
from the published rates. It is probable that the practice 
did not continue very long, but one or two years would 
have been sufficient to set the customary rate; and there- 
after, as Sharpe writes, 65 no farmer dared to raise his 
demands. It is hardly to be supposed that minor oppres- 
sions were not practiced by farmers against the weak and 
ignorant, yet the hardening of custom and the watchfulness 
of the Lower House held the collection of the quit-rents to 
such a standard of justice that we hear no further 
complaints. 

61 Lower House Journal, June 13, 16, 23, 24, 1749. 

62 Ibid., November 13, 1753, December 20, 1754. 

63 Ibid., October session, 1753, passim. 
M Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 184. 

65 Archives, vol. xiv, p. 213. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 45 

When the people found themselves suddenly plunged into 
such heavy and unexpected difficulties as succeeded the dis- 
continuance of the commutation act in 1733, it was natural 
for them to seek at once to strike a new bargain with the 
proprietor. The spring session of 1735 was the first meet- 
ing of the legislature after the collection of quit-rents had 
come into practice, and the delegates seem to have been 
almost unanimously 66 in favor of a renewal of some form 
of commutation. But in spite of their unanimity, the old 
differences between grain and tobacco producers soon reap- 
peared. By a strict party vote it was decided not to impose 
any further burden on tobacco. 67 After much debate a very 
humble, almost fawning, address was adopted and sent to the 
lord proprietor. In it the Lower House admitted the great 
condescension of the proprietor in accepting the first agree- 
ment, acknowledged their mistake in refusing to renew it, 
complained of the miserable condition to which they were 
reduced, and humbly besought him to inform the governor 
whether he would accept for his quit-rents a lump sum to 
be raised in the easiest manner possible. 68 This is probably 
the most abject communication that ever passed between 
the Lower House and a proprietor, and for many years 
neither the Upper House, the governor, nor the proprietor 
ever let slip an opportunity to remind the Lower House of 
the position taken on this occasion. 

The proprietor's reply, received the next year, stated that 
he was willing to accept any just equivalent, but failed to 
state what equivalent would be considered just. 69 Before 
this answer reached the assembly, another address had 
already been drafted asking that his lordship accept paper 
currency in payment of his quit-rents; 70 but this address 

86 Without a division it was agreed to submit to the proprietor a 
proposition to farm the quit-rents (Lower House Journal, April 15, 

67 Lower House Journal, April 15, 1735; see above, p. 39, n. 38. 

68 Ibid., April 23, 1735- 

69 Ibid., April 20, 1736. 

"Ibid., April 8, 1736. A paper currency had been issued in 1733. 



46 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

was laid aside after the receipt of the proprietor's answer. 
Now by a series of partisan divisions the Eastern Shore 
delegation, with a few delegates from the Western Shore, 
carried the following resolutions, first, that an equivalent be 
offered, and second, that it should be a duty on tobacco of 
more than two shillings sterling per hogshead. But the 
Western Shore vote, with four delegates from the Eastern 
Shore, succeeded in carrying a resolution that this duty be 
less than three shillings per hogshead, and a strict shore- 
against-shore 71 vote established it at two shillings six- 
pence. 72 With the amount of the duty on tobacco thus de- 
termined, the difficult point was past ; and the house quickly 
proceeded to bring forth a scheme which deserves some 
attention. 

The lump sum to be offered the proprietor was fixed, in 
spite of the warning from the Upper House that it was too 
small, at £4000 sterling. This was to be raised by an export 
duty of two shillings sixpence on tobacco, to which were 
to be added the proceeds of the tobacco duty of one and 
one half pence already applied to the use of schools, a duty 
of five per cent, ad valorem on the importation of slaves, 
and a duty of one penny per gallon on imported liquors. 
Payment of these duties was to be in sterling money, but 
each tobacco trader and importer was to receive back in 
paper money at fifty per cent, advance the full amount of 
the duties paid in. Thus, in reality, the colony was merely 
to exchange with the importers paper money for sterling. 
Planters who shipped their tobacco direct were also to 
receive back in paper the full amount of the duty, as were 
importers of slaves and liquors. The quit-rents were then 
to be collected by the colony in paper money at fifty per 
cent, advance. This quit-rent money and the proceeds of 

71 The vote of one delegate, Richard Francis, who represented 
Annapolis, must be excepted in most of these divisions ; but it must 
be remembered that he had a brother in the Eastern Shore delega- 
tion and he himself probably belonged more to the Eastern than to 
the Western Shore. 

73 Lower House Journal, April 29, 1736. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 47 

the duty of twenty shillings sterling 73 on negroes, which 
was also payable in paper, were to be applied to refunding 
to the paper money office the bills drawn out to pay back 
the duties to the traders and shippers, all surplus being con- 
sidered as public money. 74 Though such a complicated 
scheme could never have worked satisfactorily, it is still 
worth while to see what the Lower House hoped to ac- 
complish thereby. These purposes were three: first, to 
relieve landowners of the difficulties which they were ex- 
periencing in procuring coin to pay their rents; second, 
to tap a source of sterling money from which to discharge 
the proprietary claims ; and third, to leave the real incidence 
of the tax on the landowners, who justly owed it. In 
short, it was a scheme to collect the quit-rents in paper, 
in which they could easily be paid, and to exchange this 
paper with the traders for sterling, a money which the latter 
could easily procure. This ingenious scheme of finance 
never reached the test of practice, for the proprietor replied 
that he did not think his tenants could be thoroughly in- 
formed as to the value and increase of his rents, and he 
absolutely refused to sell them for £4000. He still, how- 
ever, held out the hope that he would accept a just equivalent 
if one should be offered. 75 

The chief business transacted in relation to quit-rents dur- 
ing the next session of the legislature was the investiga- 
tion into the complaints against exactions by the farmers, 
to which reference has already been made. Although the 
governor in 1739 strongly recommended that some effort be 
made to arrange for the payment of the rents in paper 
money, 76 nothing further was done until 1742, when the 
Lower House decided by a loose party vote to renew nego- 

73 The word " sterling " used in such an expression as this does 
not mean that the duty was payable in sterling coin. There were 
several standards of value used in the colony — the shilling sterling, 
the shilling currency, etc. — and this merely fixes the standard of 
value. 

74 Lower House Journal, May 6, 1736. 
"Ibid., April 26, 1737. 

76 Ibid., May 1, 1739. 



48 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

tiations with the proprietor. 77 This time a more systematic 
method of procedure was inaugurated by applying to the 
governor for an account of the rents as collected, so that the 
house might the more intelligently consider an equivalent. 78 
Though this request was ignored by the governor, the Lower 
House proceeded to petition the proprietor to accept an 
equivalent for his quit-rents in such manner and form as 
might best suit. 79 

No reply to this address reached the assembly until the 
May session, 1744; and then the proprietor did not invest 
the governor with power to conclude a bargain, but merely 
to transmit any offer the assembly might make. Again the 
assembly addressed the proprietor, offering him the pro- 
ceeds from a duty of two shillings sixpence sterling per 
hogshead on tobacco, but not guaranteeing any minimum 
amount. 80 This duty on a normal exportation — about thirty 
thousand hogsheads — would have produced much less than 
the quit-rents were then paying, and at that time the Euro- 
pean wars were reducing the chances of successful exporta- 
tion. On the advice of his officers, 81 therefore, the propri- 
etor rejected the proposal, but he empowered the governor 
to conclude such a bargain as he should deem just. At the 
opening of the next session, in August, 1745, the prospects 
for a new arrangement in regard to the quit-rent seemed 
more favorable than they had been for many years. Again 
the house asked for an exact account of the rents as col- 
lected and a statement of what would be considered a just 
equivalent. Governor Bladen replied that the total amount 
of the rents that year was £5369 us. 3d., of which £4568 
15s. 4d. had actually reached the proprietor, and that im- 
proved methods of collection then being introduced were 
expected to raise the proprietor's receipts to £5101 2s. 2d. 
Moreover, the increase had been very great during the last 

"Lower House Journal, October 15, 1742. 

78 Ibid., October 21, 1742. 

79 Ibid., October 27, 28, 1742. 

80 Ibid., May 2, 18, 26, 29, 1744. 
"Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 104. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 49 

five years, and many warrants and certificates were then 
awaiting patent, which would still further augment the 
rents. In view of these facts the Lower House was in- 
formed that nothing less than £5000 would be considered a 
proper equivalent. 82 

The receipt of this message started one of the most heated 
discussions ever carried on in the Lower House of the 
Maryland colonial assembly. From 1707 to 1742 there had 
been an equal number of counties on each shore, but the 
erection of Worcester County in 1742 and the exclusion of 
Frederick County until 1748 gave the Eastern Shore a nom- 
inal majority of two votes, which by the frequent division 
of the Annapolis vote made, when all were present, a work- 
ing majority of four. With this majority the Eastern 
Shore delegates proceeded to rush through the house a bill 
offering the required £5000. 83 By the defection of three 
Talbot men and the deciding vote of the speaker they lost 
the plan to tax nothing but tobacco; yet a committee of 
three from each shore failed to agree to a tax on grain, 
and with the aid of two votes from St. Mary's and two from 
Baltimore the Eastern shore delegates defeated the grain 
tax. Another committee dropped all export duties except 
those on tobacco and lumber. There was also a contest of 
old standing being waged between the Patriot party and the 
proprietor over the support of the militia. The Patriots 
maintained that certain revenue which was being turned to 
the proprietor's personal use should properly be devoted to 
the defence of the province, and they consequently refused 
to make any further appropriation for the support of the 
militia. The war going on at this time made the matter 
acute, and Governor Bladen intimated that he would make 

82 Lower House Journal, August 28, September 9, 10, 1745. _ 

83 The votes were shore against shore with the following ex- 
ceptions : Three Talbot County delegates often voted with the 
Western Shore; the two Annapolis votes were usually split; oc- 
casionally two delegates from St. Mary's and more rarely one from 
Baltimore and one from Charles are found voting with the Eastern 
Shore. Shore feeling must have run high during this period, 
for on many other questions the division is almost as sharply drawn 
as on the quit-rents. 

4 



50 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

the acceptance of a quit-rent offer conditional upon the pas- 
sage of a satisfactory militia bill. This condition seems not 
to have been distinctly understood by the delegates until after 
the passage of the quit-rent bill. When it did become un- 
derstood, the advocates of the quit-rent measure made a des- 
perate effort to revive the question, although the militia bill 
had already been rejected. Even the desire for a quit-rent 
commutation, however, was not sufficient to overcome the 
hatred of proprietary oppression, and the defection of eleven 
Eastern Shore delegates rendered the attempt hopeless. 
As the militia bill had failed, Governor Bladen, true to his 
threat, refused to accept the quit-rent proposal, thus bring- 
ing to naught the most promising effort to reach a new 
agreement since the rejection of the old one in 1733. 84 

Though the supporters of a quit-rent agreement were 
exceptionally persistent during 1745, yet, strangely enough, 
the question was never again raised in the assembly. For 
this omission there were several cooperating causes, the most 
important of which was the peculiar political turn given to the 
question by Governor Bladen. It was clearly evident that a 
renewal of the proposition would lead to the same condition 
concerning the militia bill, and that both would meet the 
same fate as before. The second cause was that increas- 
ing economic sectionalism made a large tobacco tax hope- 
lessly unjust and unworkable, while a corresponding export 
duty on grain would have handicapped a trade in which 
every one rejoiced. The increase in the supply of gold and 
silver which began to make itself felt about this time also 
helped to make the payment of quit-rents easier, thereby 
lessening the demand for commutation. Finally, as the sys- 
tem of collection came to run more smoothly, opportunities 
for injustice were eliminated and the people became more 
accustomed to paying their rents. The problem of procur- 
ing sterling for rents, however, did not vanish. As late as 
1763 the Lower House refused to change the tobacco in- 
spection charges to a sterling basis because, as they said, the 

"Lower House Journal, 1745, passim. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 51 

people already experienced great difficulty in procuring 
enough sterling to pay their rents. 85 But in general after 
about 1745 the difficulty in the payment of quit-rents was 
not sufficiently acute to cause any widespread opposition. 

After 1745, aside from the elimination of frauds against 
the people, the history of quit-rents is merely an account 
of the gradual working out of cheaper and more effectual 
methods of collection. When collection was resumed in 
J 733> a s we have seen, the whole system had to be organ- 
ized anew, and the cost of collection under the new system 
was either fifteen per cent, of the amount collected or a 
reduction of twenty per cent, to twenty-five per cent, from 
the total amount shown by the rent-rolls. Furthermore, the 
rent-rolls had not been kept during the period of the com- 
mutation, and they were so incomplete that vast quantities 
of land did not appear on them; it is probable, therefore, 
that the losses from omission were greater than the cost of 
collecting the remainder. 

As the periods for the renewal of tax-farming contracts 
recurred, the agent was urged to improve the terms if pos- 
sible ; 86 but it seems that for many years no improvement was 
feasible. About 1745 there seems to have been a scheme 
on foot to have the sheriffs collect the rents at five per cent, 
commission ; at least this proposition was made by the gov- 
ernor to the Lower House, but political reasons for the state- 
ment are very evident. 87 Aside from these two notices of 
doubtful significance there is nothing to show that any effort 
was made to improve the system of collection during the 
lifetime of Charles Lord Baltimore. 

On the accession of Frederick, however, conditions 
changed. Frederick himself was a spendthrift, always de- 
manding more and more revenue ; and his uncle Cecilius Cal- 

86 Lower House Journal, October 25, 1763. In some cases leases 
were so drawn that enough of the rent to discharge the quit-rent 
was payable in sterling and the remainder in currency (Baltimore 
County, Court Records, 1755, Liber BB No. B, p. 242 ; Cecil County, 
Land Records, Liber FL No. 13, p. 184). 

8a Calvert Papers, MS., No. 278. 

"Lower House Journal, September 10, 1745. 



52 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

vert,whom he appointed his secretary, was a man whose chief 
pleasure was to dabble in politics in Maryland and to in- 
crease the proprietary revenue. Calvert worked out a 
scheme for compelling the sheriffs, as part of their duties, 
to collect the quit-rents for a ten per cent, commission ; but 
the expiration of the farmers' contracts in 1753 came too 
quickly for Governor Sharpe to get the plan into operation, 
and it became necessary to renew these contracts for two 
years more. Sharpe succeeded in getting a better bargain 
with the farmers, however, by which they agreed to increase 
the returns from eighty to eighty-five per cent, of the total 
rent due. 88 When these contracts expired in 1755, Calvert's 
scheme was put in practice. The sheriff in each county was 
also commissioned tax-farmer and was required to give bond 
for a sum equal to ninety per cent, of the total rent due 
from his county, as it appeared by the rent-roll delivered to 
him. The only reductions to be allowed were for mistakes 
in the preparation of this rent-roll and, probably, for certain 
large tracts of uncultivated land held by persons not in the 
colony. 89 

This method of collection lasted for about twelve years, 
but was never very satisfactory. The avarice of the pro- 
prietor led him to begrudge the ten per cent, for collection, 
and he tried to have it reduced to six per cent. The sheriffs, 
on the other hand, found the work unprofitable even at ten 
per cent., and it was only because of the large income from 
other duties of the office that men could be found to take, it. 
On one occasion, indeed, no one in Frederick County was 
willing to accept the sheriff's commission, and it had to go to 
a man from Prince George's. In few counties did ten per 
cent, of the total rent due amount to more than £50, and 
much land was held by persons in other counties, 90 so that 
the cost of collection was more than the rent amounted to ; 

88 Archives, vol. vi, pp. 8, 13, 30, 54, 129. 

89 Ibid., vol. vi, p. 295; Provincial Court Record, Liber BT No. 
5, P. 590. 

"By a report to the Lower House on April 28, 1757, it appears 
that nearly eighteen per cent, of the land of Frederick County was 
held by persons living elsewhere. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 53 

all this was lost by the sheriff. 91 As the sheriffs looked 
upon the quit-rent farm as a burden upon their offices, it is 
not surprising that their payments were not so prompt as 
those of the private farmers who devoted their whole at- 
tention to the collection of the rents. It was because of 
this delinquency (due somewhat to the inactivity of the 
proprietor's agent, perhaps) that the collection of quit-rents 
was taken from the sheriffs about 1767 and restored to 
private farmers. 92 

The incompleteness of rent-rolls could have been remedied 
by more careful attention on the part of the officials, and 
some improvement was effected. Between 1740 and 1745 
many persons who had occupied land after the survey and 
had never taken out final papers were forced to complete 
the patent and thus subject themselves to the quit-rent. 
With the exception of these cases, the compilation of com- 
plete rolls was a matter of searching through the land 
records from the patent to the last transfers to determine 
the acreage, the rent, and the owner. This was no small 
task, especially when the rent-roll keepers looked upon their 
office almost as a sinecure, and did no more in the execu- 
tion of their duties than was absolutely unavoidable. Gov- 
ernor Sharpe was repeatedly urged to have the rolls better 
prepared, and he even made up the roll for one county him- 
self, possibly in order to learn how difficult the work really 
was. By means of constant urging and with specific instruc- 
tions and forms sent from England, the rent-rolls were 
gradually worked into better condition; but even as late as 
1760 their condition was such that Sharpe could write, 
" Much Waste has been & now is of Quit Rent not in Pos- 
session of the Proprietor . . . the present Condition and 
Management of the Office is a Reproach of Misdemeanor in 
publick Employment/' 93 

91 Archives, vol. ix, p. 428; vol. xiv, pp. 213-14 

92 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 375. 

98 Ibid., vol. ix, p. 404. The extreme inefficiency of Edward Lloyd 
in the office of agent, or receiver general, was responsible for much 
of this disorder. 



54 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

It is now in order to establish as far as possible the 
economic effects of the quit-rent. Such matters are not easy 
to decide even concerning times like the present, when 
all possible data are at hand. To reach very definite con- 
clusions about Maryland in the eighteenth century is ex- 
tremely difficult, but some few points may be shown to be 
very probable. 

The first step in respect to the quit-rent is to determine 
its proportion to the value of land. A four shilling quit- 
rent on one hundred acres of land worth over a thousand 
pounds and paying rent in proportion would not be a very 
heavy tax ; but if the land was worth only a few pounds and 
paid only ten or twelve shillings rent, it would be an intol- 
erable burden. Neither of these extremes is the true state 
of the case. Land showed a steady increase in value through- 
out the colonial period. In 1720 it was worth about 4 or 5 
shillings per acre. At this rate the quit-rent was from .8 to 

1 per cent, of the value. As the amount of patented land 
increased, the proportion of the quit-rent fell until in 1765 it 
was, perhaps, not above .2 per cent. These figures, how- 
ever, are for the average value of land, including improved 
and unimproved. Allowing for the value of improvements, 
the proportion of the quit-rent will amount, perhaps, to 1 or 

2 per cent, in 1720 and from .5 to 1 per cent, in 1765. The 
quit-rent must also be estimated in proportion to the rental 
value of land. In 1740 land rents in the more thickly settled 
counties were, perhaps, from £3 to £5 per hundred acres. 
The quit-rent of 4 shillings is between 4 and 7 per cent, 
of this rent. Allowing again for the value of improve- 
ments, which was not far from half the value of the land, 
the quit-rent will amount to from 7 to 12 per cent, of the 
rental value of land. 

These rates represent about the same proportion of rental 
value as does a modern tax rate of one dollar on the hundred ; 
but it must be remembered that in colonial Maryland the 
regular tax in support of government was a poll-tax, and 
that the quit-rent was an additional charge not expended 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 55 

for governmental purposes. In comparing the quit-rent 
with a modern property tax it must also be kept in mind that 
a general property tax is proportioned to the value of the 
property, but that the quit-rent fell with equal weight on the 
highly valuable land of Anne Arundel and Talbot counties 
and the almost worthless land of Dorchester and Frederick. 
In those frontier counties to which new settlers were most 
apt to come the quit-rent amounted to two or even three 
per cent, of the value of the land. Moreover, heavy as the 
quit-rent was in 1720, it had been still heavier in the pre- 
ceding years. Except along the frontier, where land could 
not assume a value much above the price demanded by the 
proprietor for patent land, the proportionate severity of 
the quit-rent constantly diminished with the lapse of time 
and the increase of values. By the time a piece of land had 
come to be worth fifteen or twenty shillings per acre, 
therefore, the quit-rent had spent its force, and had already 
accomplished its full results for good or evil. 

Thoughtful men at the time, though as unable to make 
specific statements regarding the injuries done by this tax as 
are we today, were vaguely conscious that the quit-rent was 
a burden on general prosperity. The higher prices both 
from sale and rent brought by land in Pennsylvania was a 
burning question in the minds of many Marylanders. The 
clergy tax, 94 fees collected by land officers, negro labor, pop- 
ulation, healthfulness, market facilities, caution fees, and 
quit- rents were all thought to be factors in the condition; 95 
but no one seems to have appreciated the value of the labor 
of hard-working German farmers as contrasted with the 
more easy-going Marylanders. On one thing, however, all 
were agreed: the land charges — purchase price and quit- 
rents — in Maryland could not be increased. We have seen 
how Sharpe and Lloyd opposed an increase in quit-rents in 

94 A tax of forty, then thirty pounds of tobacco per taxable laid 
for the support of the clergy. In 1764 Dulany wrote of the ill 
effects of this tax (Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 240). 

96 Calvert Papers, MS., No. 1161; Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 241; 
Archives, vol. vi, p. $J. 



56 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

1754, and how in 1764 Dulany wrote that an advance in the 
purchase price without a corresponding reduction of the 
officers' fees "wou'd effectually put a stop to the Business 
of the Land-office." A few years later Hugh Hamersley, 
when asked about the possibility of making the settlement 
of the Pennsylvania line an excuse for advancing the quit- 
rents to ten shillings per hundred acres, replied in a similar 
strain that he thought such a step would put a stop to all 
applications to the land office. 96 These expressions, though 
coming mostly from men personally interested in the fees of 
the land office, nevertheless have a ring of genuineness 
which shows that in the opinions of those who held them the 
quit-rents were at the highest point the land would bear. 
The fears of these men were fully borne out by the re- 
sults of the one experiment with a ten shilling quit-rent. It 
will be recalled that the quit-rent was fixed at four shillings 
per hundred acres in 1671, and the purchase price at forty 
shillings per hundred acres in 171 7. The quit-rent was raised 
in 1733 to ten shillings per hundred acres, but in 1738 was 
put back to four shillings and the purchase price advanced 
from forty shillings to one hundred shillings. The effects 
of these changes on the business of the land-office were start- 
ling. During the five years preceding the advance of the 
rent to ten shillings, warrants were taken out for an average 
of 28,535 acres per year. During the six months following 
the advance there were warranted only 692 acres. In the 
next five years, during which the quit-rent remained ten shil- 
lings, the total acreages warranted were as follows: 1734, 
2205^ ; 1735, 2357 ; 1736, 2368 ; 1737, 4255 ; 1738, 3991. In 
the next five years, although the purchase price was £5 per 
hundred acres instead of £2, the quit-rent was again four 
shillings per hundred acres, and the average acreage war- 
ranted was i6,439. 97 Thus the average amount of land war- 

86 Archives, vol. xiv, p. 377. 

97 All these figures on land warrants are liable to serious errors. 
The object held in mind in compiling them has been to exclude all 
warrants that would bear conditions other than those prevailing at 
the time of their issue; also, renewals of warrants should obviously 
be excluded to prevent duplication. Undoubtedly some warrants 



THE CHARGES ON LAND 57 

ranted per year under the ten shilling rate was about ten per 
cent, of the amount warranted during the last year under the 
four shilling rate, and about seventeen per cent, of the aver- 
age warranted during the first five years under the reduced 
quit-rent and the advanced purchase price. 

In the light of the foregoing figures and expressions of 
opinion it can scarcely be doubted that the quit-rent consti- 
tuted a serious burden on the land of colonial Maryland and 
materially retarded the progress of the province. To the 
prospective settler seeking a home the colony could not offer 
as attractive inducements with such a burden as without, 
hence it is probable that many settlers turned off into other 
colonies who might otherwise have stopped in Maryland. 
In the advance of the Germans into the great Appalachian 
valleys Maryland was at first avoided. Many families 
moved from Pennsylvania across into Virginia apparently 
without thought of settling on the rich lands along the 
Monocacy through which they journeyed. This retardation 
of settlement was in all likelihood due to the burdens 98 rest- 
ing on land in Maryland and the attractive offers of land 

bearing special rates have crept in undetected; but since taken all 
together such warrants are few, errors from this source are 
negligible. However, warrants of resurvey to include vacancy do 
not show the amount of vacancy until they reach the certificate 
stage, and vacant land taken up by this means is, therefore, entirely 
omitted. This omission runs through all three stages, and, con- 
sequently, will have little effect on the comparisons drawn. Another 
source of error, however, does affect the comparison, but entirely in 
favor of the argument here, that is, the number of warrants taken 
out during the high rent period which were never executed. Some 
were simply allowed to lapse; and many more, after the reduction 
of the rent, were surrendered and cancelled, and new warrants taken 
out on the payment of the increased caution fee. If such warrants 
could be deducted, the acreage shown here for the high rent 
period would be still further reduced. 

88 We must not understand the quit rent to be the only one of 
these burdens, but also include the entire amount of taxation. The 
regular taxes — poll assessments — were perhaps about the same in 
all three of these colonies. There were, however, certain special 
taxes. The quit-rent was higher in Pennsylvania than in Mary- 
land and more than twice as high in Maryland as in Virginia. The 
fees due officials of the land office on every grant of land were 
higher in Maryland than in the others. There was a clergy tax in 
Virginia the same as in Maryland, but none in Pennsylvania. Thus, 
the entire burden in Maryland was greater than in either of the 
neighboring colonies. 



58 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

on easy terms in Virginia. Though this is probably the 
only specific case" in which we can say that the hard terms 
in Maryland turned away prospective inhabitants, yet the 
great numbers of individuals who must have acted on the 
same principles, though it is impossible to demonstrate how 
many of them there were, constituted a decided loss to the 
province. 

More beneficial and more far-reaching, perhaps, was the 
influence of the quit-rent and other land charges on the size 
of the holding in Maryland. In the early years of the 
colony, when the quit-rents were so low as to be almost 
negligible, enormous tracts were taken up and erected into 
the manors so prominent at that time. The average grant 
in Charles County before 1650 was nearly 1200 acres. 100 
This average soon fell, however, with the advance of the 
quit-rents. Between 1650 and 1660 it dropped to about 200 
acres, and it never again rose much above that amount. 101 
During the five years just preceding the advancement of the 
quit-rent to ten shillings per hundred acres in 1735 the 
average size of the tracts warranted throughout the whole 
province was 158 acres; during the five years of the ten 
shilling rate this average fell to 74 acres; and during the 
first five years of the lowered quit-rent and advanced pur- 
chase price the average tract warranted rose to 105 acres. 102 
The influence of the quit-rent in keeping down the amount 
of land held by an individual is also shown by the number 
of disclaimers to land which appear in the rent-rolls. Not 

"In 1737 the clergy of Maryland complained that the Quakers 
were persuading people on the border to transfer their allegiance to 
Pennsylvania because of the clergy tax (forty pounds of tobacco 
per taxable), which they called an intolerable burden (Acts of Privy 
Council, Colonial Series, vol. iii, p. 338). 

100 Rent Roll, 1750, in Maryland Historical Society. Resurveys are 
excluded from these figures as the books do not give the date of 
the original survey. As they are frequently for large tracts, con- 
sideration of them would, perhaps, heighten the contrast here 
drawn. 

101 The highest average for a decade after 1660 was 304 acres 
between 1690 and 1700. The land charges were being gradually 
advanced until 1671, after which they remained fixed until 1717. 

102 Warrant Books in the Land Office. 



THE CHARGES ON LAND $9 

only did many persons merely disclaim the ownership of 
lands, but many acknowledged the ownership and deliber- 
ately surrendered their claims. Such entries as " This Land 
lett fall " or " Lett fall and the Patent returned " are very 
frequent. The Kent County debt book of 1735, for in- 
stance, shows eight disclaimers for land in that county 
amounting to 3409 acres. 103 These surrenders would never 
have occurred had there not been some expense attached to 
ownership of land. It is plain, therefore, that the quit-rent 
and, in a lesser degree, the purchase price were exerting a 
strong influence toward preventing individuals from mon- 
opolizing too much land. With smaller holdings naturally 
goes a better developed and more thickly settled country, 
with many planters of moderate means rather than a few 
of immense wealth. 104 The annual rent forced owners to 
develop their land and bring at least a part of it under cul- 
tivation. 105 This meant fewer woods, more plantations, and 
more people. 

A more specific account of some ways in which the quit- 
rent attained these results will be given in the discussion of 
land speculation in the next chapter. 

103 This may not be all the Kent disclaimers for that year, as the 
debt books present no formal list of them but only such as happened 
to be jotted down. This is, perhaps, an exceptional year for dis- 
claimers since the payment of quit-rents had been resumed but two 
years before. The debt book is in the land office, and this list is 
in copy number one. Many other debt books also show dis- 
claimed land. 

104 These seem to be just the points in which Maryland differed 
from her neighbors. In Virginia, where the quit-rents were lower, 
the landed estates were larger, population was less dense, and there 
was a greater number of very wealthy individuals. In Pennsylvania, 
on the other hand, where quit-rents were higher, landed estates 
seem to have been smaller, population seems to have been denser, 
and wealth better distributed. In Pennsylvania, however, there 
were many complicating factors such as race and agricultural con- 
ditions; and in either case, without a comparative study of two or 
more colonies, generalizations are extremely dangerous. 

105 Note the force of the quit-rent in the following appraiser's 
estimate : " We do find that the said Land is uncleared and of no 
use neither to said Dorris nor orphan and his Lordships rent high 
so that wee allow him to Settle the said land on the Lower End 
of said tract" (Cecil County, Land Records, 1735, Liber WK No. 2, 
p. no). 



CHAPTER III 

THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 

The management of land is necessarily dependent on the 
question whether it is increasing or decreasing in value. In 
colonial Maryland the history of every landed estate is col- 
ored by the fact that the property was steadily becoming 
more and more valuable. In 1721 Hugh Jones commented 
as follows on the low value of land: "Though now Land 
sells well there [in Virginia and Maryland], in a few Years 
it will be more valued, since the Number of Inhabitants 
encreases so prodigiously; and the Tracts being divided 
every Age . . . into smaller Plantations; they at Length 
must be reduced to a Necessity of making the most of, and 
valuing a little, which is now almost set at Nought." 1 As 
Jones and others saw at the time, the value of land was 
advancing and had to continue to advance as long as the 
population continued to increase. 

Between 1720 and 1730 land was worth about five shil- 
lings per acre. Sale prices according to the various deeds 
recorded in Annapolis during the years 1724 to 1730 vary 
between ninepence and £1 sterling per acre. 2 The average 
of sixty-two deeds was four shillings eightpence. As 
deeds recorded here are largely of speculative sales and con- 
tain an undue proportion of frontier and forest land, we 
must increase this average in order to get a figure represent- 
ative of the whole province. About the same number of 
deeds recorded between 1763 and 1765 range between four- 
teen pence and £3 and average twelve shillings per acre. 3 
The same objection holds with regard to this as to the 
former average — it is probably too small to represent the 

1 Present State of Virginia, p. 61. 

2 Land Office, Deeds, 1724-1732, PL No. 6. 
8 Ibid., DD No. 3. 

60 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 6 1 

value of land throughout the province. The proprietor's 
first order to sell manor land fixed ten shillings sterling per 
acre as the minimum price to be accepted for the unculti- 
vated land then offered. 4 There seem, however, to have 
been no sales under this order. Dulany wrote that manor 
land in general should bring about the same that would be 
brought by private land, and he suggested that to prevent 
jobbing none should be sold for less than £i sterling per 
acre. 5 Sharpe in 1768 supposed the unsold part of Conoco- 
cheague Manor to be worth about the same. He also says, 
in speaking of the sale of a tract in Anne Arundel County, 
that "the Bidders went so far as 31 s . sterling p r acre." 6 
From these figures and statements it may be concluded that 
in 1765 the normal value of medium land was about £1 
sterling per acre, with forest and undes'rable lands some- 
what lower and with especially desirable lands running as 
high as £2 or £3 sterling. This is an increase of at least two 
or three hundred per cent, over the land values about 1725. 
At a time when land was so rapidly increasing in value 
one would expect as a matter of course to find a great deal 
of speculation. Of speculation, however, in its narrower 
sense — securing lands at a low rate and selling them at a 
higher — the quit-rent was almost prohibitive. A transac- 
tion of this sort, involving three or four thousand acres, 
would necessarily extend over a number of years before the 
land could be disposed of, and during these years the quit- 
rents must be met or the venture would be a failure. The 
rent-rolls, therefore, show only a small number of entries 
bearing the marks of speculation. 7 A few patents appear 

4 Archives, vol. xiv, p. 191. 

"Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 243. Dulany seems to have been 
anxious to have the proprietor sell his manors, and did not under- 
state the price which they would bring. The proprietor accepted 
this advice as far as to set a minimum price of six shillings per acre 
on forest land and £1 per acre on cultivated land (Council Record, 
JR and US, pp. 418, 419). 

6 Archives, vol. xiv, pp. 335, 536. 

7 Wills also occasionally give evidence of speculation. That of 
Mathew Tilghman Ward in 1741 enumerated among the property of 
the testator "All those two Tracts of Land or Such Part thereof 



62 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

which some years later are found parcelled out among sev- 
eral owners, with the original patentee sometimes entirely 
sold out, sometimes retaining only a small quantity of land, 
and sometimes still in possession of the greater part. In 
many of these entries the patentee retained a respectable 
plantation, which suggests either that the speculation was 
incidental to the taking up of a homestead, or that the 
patentee had attempted to carry too great a burden and had 
been forced to sell off a part. The weight of the quit- 
rent was sufficient to hold speculation of this character down 
to a comparatively small amount. 8 

The great mass of land speculation was carried on in 
other ways, for the more venturesome and businesslike in- 

as belong to Me called the Union of which there remains unsold 
and belonging to me between Six or Seven Hundred Acres; and 
the other Called the three Hicks Containing about One hundred and 
Sixty Acres" (Land Office, Wills, DD No. 1, p. 363). Nicholas 
Lowe in 1745 empowered his executrix within ten years after his 
decease "to give sell and Dispose of all that part of a Tract of 
Land Called Lowes Ramble [1440 a.] lying in Talbot County afs a . 
which has not been Disposed of by me for the best price that 
Can be Got" (Land Office, Wills, DD No. 3, P- 253). 

8 The following are typical entries : — 
" Cedar Branch Neck ; 841 a. Surveyed November 29th 
1700 for Mathew Smith beginning att a marked white 
Oak— Rent p Ann. 1 . . 13. . 4- 

[Possessors in 1707] 250 to Thomas Browning, pays rent 

p Ann. . . 10. 

100 To Charles Rumsey, pays . . 4. . 

491 To Thomas Hopkins of Talbot Co. pays ..18.. 4 

481 I.. 13.. 4- 

—Cecil County, Rent-Roil, 1707, p. 8. 
" Maidens Fair Survd. 2 Oct r . 173 1 for Rich*. Speake near Ready 
Branch 

Poss. [1753] 100 John Cole 

50.... Richard Speak 

300 William Sutherland." — Charles County, Rent- 
Roil, 1753, P. "3. 

"Hudsons desappointment Originally called Quick Dispatch Re- 
surv d . for Alexander McDonald 2 January 1741 Beginning at a 
Stone Standing on a Ridge Patented 24th August 1743- 

Poss [1753] 84 Eliz a . Hudson 

33.... Richard Griffith 

50 Jos. Ratcliffe 

84 George Waples 

87 Jos. Woodyard 

207 Alex. Macdonald." — Charles County, Rent- 
Roll, 1753, P- 131. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 63 

vestors devised schemes to avoid quit-rents. The most im- 
portant of these schemes was to deal in land warrants rather 
than in land itself. The warrant, it will be remembered, 
was both transferable and divisible ; that is, a person holding 
a warrant for a thousand acres might transfer five hundred 
acres, after which there would practically exist two war- 
rants for five hundred acres each. In this way a speculator 
might take out a warrant for ten thousand acres, and with 
repeated renewals 9 let it rest until it was largely disposed 
of ; or else he might have it surveyed and have a certificate 
returned, and then allow the land to rest at this stage until 
it was desirable to patent. The speculator was thus able to 
control a large tract without any expense for quit-rents, and 
at the same time was in a position to dispose of it in parcels, 
for each of which patent might issue as required. The 
enormous number of assignments and renewals shown on the 
warrant books is eloquent testimony to the great volume of 
this trade. 

Some variations of this scheme are worth noting. In 
1732 the Lower House complained that a few large land 
dealers were holding warrants without proceeding to sur- 
vey and, by insisting that their warrants entitled them to 
locate the land wherever in the county they pleased and that 
no land could be surveyed in those counties until theirs had 
been laid out, they were obstructing all land business along 
large sections of the frontier. 10 Another variation of the 
plan was made possible by the changes in the conditions of 
plantation. When the quit-rent was advanced to ten shillings 
per hundred acres in 1733, those who held unexecuted 
warrants under the old four shilling rate found them sud- 
denly assuming an augmented value. All sorts of half- 
forgotten claims to land warrants were brushed up for re- 
newal under the old terms, and speculation in these war- 
rants was rife throughout the province. At first only such 
claims were brought forward as entitled the possessor to 

8 A warrant expired if not executed or renewed within two years 
after issue. 
10 Lower House Journal, July 28, 1732. 



64 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

warrants bearing the old terms of rent, but after the advance 
of the purchase price in 1739 any claim whatever on which 
a grant of land might be had became of increased commer- 
cial importance. 11 

Several times the proprietor issued instructions apparently 
intended to stop this speculation. In 1712 Charles Carroll 
was ordered to permit no more transfers of warrants in 
parcels. This, if carried out, would probably have put an end 
to the business, as the partial assignment of warrants was 
an indispensable part of the scheme; but the order was never 
obeyed, and the breaking up of warrants, with its attendant 
speculation, went on undiminished until the end of the colo- 
nial period. In 1740 the land officers were instructed to 
make no grants exceeding one thousand acres, and that only 
in two patents of five hundred acres each. 12 This instruc- 
tion may have prevented the patenting of a few large tracts, 
but its sting was removed in 1753 when its application was 
restricted to the well-settled counties, where no patentable 
tracts of this size were to be found. 13 Whatever may have 
been the proprietor's purpose in these orders, he must have 
found the opposition of the provincial leaders, who were the 
principal speculators, too great to be lightly opposed, for 
even open disobedience of the instructions was overlooked. 

Under the head of land speculation may be included not 
only the taking up or warranting of large tracts for the 
purpose of selling at a profit, but also the holding of quan- 
tities of uncultivated land for the future enrichment of 
family estates in the course of many years. Among a 
people coming from England, where the idea of the aristoc- 
racy of land was so firmly entrenched, it was natural for 
social position to continue to be linked with the possession of 
land; and when these people found it in their power to 
secure enormous tracts of exceptionally fertile soil, it was 

11 See the land warrant books for the period immediately follow- 
ing these dates for the great number of renewals and questionable 
petitions. 

12 Land Office, Warrants, LG No. A, p. 35s; Calvert Papers, MS., 
No. 295^. 

13 Kilty, pp. 238, 240, 276. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 65 

to be expected that they would seize domains of a magnitude 
that would be beyond the imagination of their relatives in 
England. Land — next to gold the most powerful form of 
wealth they had ever known — was here for the taking, and 
they did not fail to take it. Men secured vast tracts which 
they could not possibly develop and, living on a small corner 
in which they had cleared a plantation, reserved the re- 
mainder for benefits to be reaped in the far future. Toward 
the end of the seventeenth century Edmund Randolph esti- 
mated that of the five million acres of patented land in 
Virginia not more than forty thousand acres, or less than 
one per cent., had been in the least rescued from its primeval 
condition. 14 In 1697 Governor Nicholson wrote to the 
Board of Trade that these large land holders were respon- 
sible for the fact that many persons, especially freed ser- 
vants, left both Virginia and Maryland for other colonies, 
and he suggested that unless the owners were forced to sell 
some of this unused land at low rates, it could not be 
"planted in this age or the next." 15 

One of the objects in retaining such large uncultivated 
tracts was the natural desire to provide for one's children. 
In colonial Maryland this desire to accumulate for posterity 
shows itself as something apart from the desire for per- 

14 P. A. Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth 
Century, vol. ii, p. 576. 

13 This letter is dated March 27, 1697. Nicholson made certain 
proposals for the settlement of the head of the bay, and added the 
following proviso : " Provided no one man were allowed to take up 
above two or three hundred acres at most. Some persons have 
taken up great quantities of land both in Virginia and Maryland, 
of whom few or none are able to improve it all, and this is one 
great reason why young English Colonists and freed servants 
leave these Colonies and go either Southward or Northward; for 
they are naturally ambitious to be landlords, not tenants." In a 
letter of July 13, 1697, he reiterates these ideas : " Most of them 
[the members of the legislatures] or their friends and relations hold 
great tracts of land, and they are fearful that, if they own it [that 
they are driving away settlers] they would be compelled to part with 
some of it upon easy terms, which if they do not, I do not see 
how it is to be planted in this age or the next" (Cal. St. P., 
Amer. and W. I., 1696-1697, pp. 422, 546). Remember also the lines 
in Sotweed Redivivus, written in 1730:— 
" But one Man to monopolize 
More Land, than yet he occupies," etc. 

5 



66 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-1765 

sonal riches, because the engrossing of land for the next 
generation usually meant a direct sacrifice by the present; 
it meant an outlay for first cost and a continual drain for 
quit-rents on land which lay idle and produced no returns. 16 
Not only were separate tracts left to different children, but 
also a single tract was very frequently divided between sev- 
eral heirs. In a country where the agricultural unit is fairly 
well determined, as is the case in Maryland today, it is very 
rare that a farm is divided among children; but when the 
size of the unit is fluctuating, or when the devisor holds land 
which is not being tilled, it is no shock to agricultural custom 
to parcel out a tract among several heirs. The wills and 
the rent-rolls 17 show very many cases in which such a divi- 
sion of tracts has taken place. 18 In fact, this process went on 
to such an extent that it was an important element in re- 
ducing the old unwieldy estates into farms which more 
nearly approached the economic unit of highest efficiency. 
The influence of the quit-rent on these forms of land spec- 
ulation is evident. The less a man must pay each year as 
expenses on undeveloped land, the greater amount will he 
take up and hold for an increased value or to transmit 
to his children. Without a quit-rent, a purchase price, or 
some form of restriction on the amount of land to be held 
by a single individual, the development of the country would 
have been almost impossible, for the soil undoubtedly would 
have been monopolized by a few speculators, to the exclusion 
of the ordinary settler. Under the existing conditions, 
however, only so much land was secured as the patentee felt 
able to carry; and only a small burden of this sort was 

19 Dulany wrote in 1764: "They who have children to provide for 
keep their Land with that view, it is a kind of property less slippery, 
than money is, in the Hands of Young or Improvident People" 
(Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 242). 

17 Hugh Jones, writing about 1721, said, " Since the Number of 
Inhabitants encreases so prodigiously; and the Tracts being divided 
every Age among several Children (not unlike Gavel Kind in 
Kent and Urchinfield) into smaller Plantations; they at Length must 
be reduced to a Necessity of making the most of, and valuing a little, 
which is now almost set at Nought" (p. 61). 

18 The rent-rolls show a great number of tracts held in several 
equal parcels by persons of the same name as the original patentee. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 6j 

sufficient to make a vast difference in the quantities taken 
up. Thus a Virginian under the two shilling rent payable in 
tobacco could afford to carry more than twice as much spec- 
ulative land as a Marylander under the four shilling rent 
payable in specie. 19 It was here, perhaps, that the quit- 
rents and other land liabilities had their most beneficial and 
important results. 

The system of leasing made possible the securing of more 
land than would otherwise have been the case. At all times 
the renter comes only from the class of men who are un- 
able to get land of their own ; 20 and it may be safely inferred 
that the more difficult land is to procure the larger and the 
more dependable will be the renting class. It is apparent, 
therefore, that as the vacant lands became exhausted and 
those under patent increased in value, leasing and farming 
would become more and more popular. In the older coun- 
ties vacant land was becoming exhausted during the third and 
fourth decades of the eighteenth century, and the frontier 
was being pushed back beyond the head of navigation on 
many of the rivers. 21 By 1754, except in Frederick County, 
there was not a single tract of desirable vacant land large 
enough to be erected into a manor. 22 It is during this 
period, therefore, that leasing seems first to have become 
important. Though some leases appear in the last quarter 
of the seventeenth century, 23 Hugh Jones, writing in 1721, 
said that the system was "not very common, most having 
Land of their own." 24 Very few leases are recorded pre- 

19 In comparison with Virginia it must be remembered that the 
rents were very frequently avoided there, especially on large tracts. 
This was not the case in Maryland. 

20 Governor Nicholson in the letter quoted on page 65 testifies to 
the natural aversion to being tenants. 

21 Both warrant books and rent-rolls show that land grants almost 
cease in the older counties about this time. 

22 Archives, vol. vi, p. 52. 

23 In 1684 the land council was instructed to renew leases on the 
proprietary manors (Archives, vol. xvii, p. 259). 

24 "Sometimes whole Plantations are sold, and at other Times 
small Habitations and Lands are let ; but this is not very common, 
most having Land of their own; and \hzy that have not may make 
more Profit by turning Overseers, or else by some other better 
Ways, than by Farming" (p. 61). 



68 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

vious to 1720, but after that date they became increasingly 
numerous. 25 It is between 1720 and 1750 that we find both 
the proprietary and the private manors being let out in 
numerous leaseholds. Thus, though leasing sprang up so 
gradually that it is difficult to set a date for its beginning, we 
may say that, in all probability, it began to expand to im- 
portant dimensions between the years 1720 and 1735. 

The terms of leases varied considerably. There was a 
gradation from the overseer, who for a share in the crop 
superintended a gang of hands, to the lessor who held his 
land for a period of more than fifty years and paid a fixed 
annual rent. 26 Those renters who approached the status of 
overseers held for only short periods, frequently from year 
to year, 27 and often with no written instrument. 28 Formal 
leases, however, tended toward much longer periods. Five, 
seven, fourteen, and twenty-one years were favorite periods, 
the last, perhaps, being the most common. A very popular 
long tenure, especially on large estates, was for a life or 
lives, usually for three lives. 29 The prevalence of these long 
periods was due to two reasons : First, the lessor, who 
often dealt with numerous tenants, desired relief, as far as 
possible, from the trouble of changing them ; and second, the 
lessee, who often had to develop tracts of new ground, 
desired a term sufficiently long to obtain recompense for 
the improvements put upon another's land. 

25 Too much must not be inferred from this, as the enactment in 
1715 of a law requiring that certain leases be recorded may account 
for the difference. However, the change was not sudden, but was 
by a gradual growth. 

28 Richard Bennett, who lived in Queen Anne County, had over- 
seers in Kent, Cecil, Talbot, and Dorchester counties, Maryland, 
and even in Accomac, Virginia. Overseers at such distances, of 
necessity, had all the freedom and responsibility of tenants (Land 
Office, Wills, Liber DD No. 7, p. 466). 

27 Baltimore, Court Records, 1731, Liber HS No. 7, p. 249. 

28 Suits for rent in which no lease is referred to are a strong 
indication that none existed. Bills for part of a year's rent — for 

example, "To 1 mo. 20 days rent of sd. plantation 142 lbs." — 

would also be very improbable under a written instrument. See 
Somerset County, Court Records, 1748, Liber P, p. 107; Charles 
County, Court Records, 1722, Liber N No. 2, p. 79. 

29 That is, three persons were named, usually three members of the 
lessee's family, and the lease continued as long as any of these 
survived. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 69 

The rates at which land was rented varied almost as 
much as the periods. Rates are found as low as ten shil- 
lings a year per hundred acres, and as high as £10. Such 
a matter naturally depended upon the quality, location, and 
improvements of the land, the bargaining power of the 
parties, and the date at which the bargain was made. As 
would be supposed, land rents gradually increased as the 
century advanced. Hugh Jones, writing about 1721, stated 
that servants when freed may " rent a small Plantation for 
a Trifle almost;" 30 he could hardly have said this of the £5 
and £10 rents of the later period. The steady advance of 
rents on the proprietary manors is another indication of the 
general advance of rents throughout the province. 31 Though 
under such circumstances a generalization as to the renting 
value of land must be very dangerous, it may be said that 
about 1750 a plantation of medium size and desirability 
(from one hundred and fifty to two hundred acres) might be 
rented for from six hundred to a thousand pounds of to- 
bacco, or from £5 to £8 currency per year. 

In the early part of the eighteenth century the rent was 
almost invariably expressed in tobacco or some other agricul- 
tural product; but as the century advanced, and with the 
general change from tobacco currency to coin, money rents 
became more and more numerous. Frequently there were 
stipulations in the leases by which the lessee undertook to 
make certain improvements as a part of the rent. Setting 
out and maintaining orchards was the most frequent pro- 
vision of this character ; nearly all leases of land from the 
proprietor bore such a clause, and it was imitated by many 
private lessors. Other requirements of the same nature 
were the erection of houses and fences. These provisions 
were at times considered as part of the bargain over and 
above the stipulated rent, and at other times as a substitute 
for rent during one or more years. When unimproved land 
was rented, there was often a clause suspending payment 

80 P. 54. As Jones himself tells us, such statements apply as well 
to Maryland as to Virginia. 

81 See page 93. 



70 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

of rent for the first two years to repay the tenant for the 
labor of improvement. 32 

A great hindrance to the leasing of land was the waste 
of which tenants were often guilty. Under the extensive 
system of farming, especially of tobacco, the first few crops 
from new ground were by far the heaviest; and after they 
were off, the soil was left of little value for agriculture until 
it had gone through a period of years in fallow. Governor 
Sharpe wrote that the tenants on the proprietary manors 
during the last few years of their terms put in such quan- 
tities of tobacco that they left the land impoverished and 
untenantable. He proposed that a clause be put into the 
leases limiting the number of acres that might be planted 
in tobacco during the last three years. 33 In the case of 
orphans' lands, 34 which were under control of the guardians, 
the viewers almost invariably limited the amount of land 
that might be cleared for cultivation. Waste of timber was 
another grievance that lessors charged against lessees. 
When not legally prevented, tenants often cut out all the 
timber fit for clapboards, staves, shingles, or rails, and 
left the land without sufficient wood to maintain buildings 
and fences. The viewers of orphans' lands usually specified 
also that only so much timber of this sort might be felled as 
was needed to maintain the plantation. Secretary Calvert 
complained in 1754 that impoverishment of the soil and 
waste of timber by former tenants were occasioning the pro- 
prietary lands to go untenanted. 35 

With regard to the low rents and the waste by tenants, 
Daniel Dulany wrote in 1764 : " Every Gentleman who lets 
out Land in this Country, knows, how difficult it is, with 

32 In this discussion it is thought unnecessary to give specific 
references, as the land books of any county will reveal instances of 
each of these provisions. 

^Archives, vol. vi, p. 38. 

84 On the death of a landholder leaving minor children three ap- 
praisers visited his land and made out an inventory showing the 
land and its improvements, and fixed a valuation on the rent to 
which the guardian should be held. This was recorded to serve as 
evidence should the orphan, on coming of age, sue for waste. 

85 Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 180. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND /I 

the utmost Care, to make any considerable profit by that 
scheme, & how impracticable it is to get an annual Rent 
equal to half the Interest w ch wou'd arise from the money, 
for which the Land wou'd sell, or to prevent the Abuses 
of Tenants in the Commission of waste/' 36 From one point 
of view Dulany was probably right. Land at this time was 
worth about £i per acre, and a hundred-acre plantation 
would scarcely bring more than £5 or £6 per year rent. This 
is but five or six per cent, on the investment, even allowing 
no depreciation for waste. The profit from leasing lands, 
however, arose partly from the steady increase which was 
taking place in the value of land, and partly from the prac- 
tice of securing woodland at low rates and increasing its 
value by bringing it into cultivation. Governor Sharpe 
wrote in 1765 that gentlemen in Maryland were then pur- 
chasing land with no other view than to lease it out when 
patent land was no longer to be obtained. 37 

That leasing of land was in some way profitable is abun- 
dantly proved by the amount of property thus cultivated. 
Great numbers of persons who held more land than they 
could occupy rented out a corner to some one who was will- 
ing to carve a plantation out of the forest for a couple of 
years free of rent. Sometimes the tract was sufficient to ac- 
commodate several plantations besides that of the owner. In 
this way sufficient income would be secured to pay at least 
the quit-rents, and thus enable the owner to retain the land 
until its value increased, or until it became desirable to set up 
his children as planters. Wills and valuations of orphans' 
lands show hundreds of estates on which the owner lived 
with one or more tenants grouped around him. 38 But not 

86 Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 242. 

37 Archives, vol. xiv, p. 204. 

39 The following is a typical report : We find " there is on the 
afs d . tract called Wartons Adventure, three seperate Settlements 
Vizt. the late dwelling place where the dece d . Wm. Warton last 
lived, one other Settlement called Bat Burks, the other called 
Thos. Cooks" (Queen Anne, Land Records, JK No. B, p. 180). In 
the Gazette of January 22, 1756, Anne Beale advertised for rent a 
part of the plantation whereon she then lived. Other such cases 
are numerous. 



72 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

all renting was of land contiguous to the owner's plantation. 
The greater landholders owned and rented lands in parcels 
scattered throughout a county or even in several counties. 
Securing, improving, and renting out lands in this way be- 
came one of the greatest fields for investment in the colony. 39 

Resembling somewhat the system of developing land by 
leasing was the system of working it by means of overseers. 
Although overseers' contracts are, naturally, less abundant 
than leases, enough of them have come down to us to show 
what the system was. The period of these contracts is usu- 
ally for but a single year or, as it is generally expressed, for 
a single crop. In some cases, however, they were for as 
long as four or five years. 40 The remuneration took several 
forms. At times the overseer was paid a fixed salary vary- 
ing from £10 to £30 per year. 41 In a large majority of 
instances, however, the overseer was paid a share in the 
crop; this was the customary method of payment. The 
share of the overseer varied according to the number of 
slaves to be worked, the rule being in many cases to divide 
the crop into as many shares as there were hands on the 
place including the overseer, of which shares one went to 
the overseer and the remainder to the owner. By this plan 
the overseer gained nothing from an increase in the number 
of slaves put in his charge; the contracts, therefore, always 
specified or limited this number. 

Special provisions concerning various minor matters were 
often put into the contracts. The overseer was sometimes 
permitted to cultivate for himself — presumably with the aid 
of the servants or slaves in his charge — patches of corn or 
wheat. 42 Keeping driving-horses, milch-cows, or a number 

88 All the great landholders took part in this business. Charles 
Carroll writes that he spent much money on the lands of his 
nephew in developing them and preparing them for tenants (Johns 
Hopkins University Papers, box 38, in Maryland Historical 
Society). 

40 See Baltimore County, Court Records, 1724/5, JS No. TW4, 
p. 147. 

41 These limits are almost guesses, but the few cases I have seen 
come within them. 

42 Baltimore County, Court Records, 1722, JS No. TWZ, p. 195. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 73 

of hogs or sheep was also at times agreed on. 43 There was 
generally a provision concerning the maintenance of the 
overseer, and sometimes that of the slaves. When the over- 
seer was to live on the dwelling plantation of the owner, he 
was sometimes furnished with lodging, board, washing, and 
mending ; 44 when he was to live on a separate plantation, he 
was occasionally required to maintain himself, 45 but usually 
he was supplied with provisions. A Baltimore County con- 
tract calls for a year's supplies as follows: three hundred 
pounds of pork, one hundred pounds of beef, one and a half 
bushels of salt, and six barrels of Indian corn. 46 Though 
the maintenance of the slaves was sometimes mentioned, it 
was always borne by the owner. 

The duties of the overseer were mainly, of course, to take 
entire charge of the cultivation of the plantation. The crops 
to be raised were agreed on by the owner and the overseer 
and were often mentioned in the contract; thereafter it was 
the overseer's duty to see that they were properly put in and 
attended to. But the overseer often had to do more than 
that. The custom of building with green lumber and of 
using no paint made structures very short-lived and kept 
construction work almost always going on. Not a little of 
the overseer's duty was, therefore, to superintend and aid in 
the erection of buildings and fences. A number of over- 
seers' contracts specify minutely what work of this sort 
shall be done. Occasionally other duties are required. In 
one case the overseer's wife was " to milk, wash, dress the 
victuals for the family, mend and make for the slaves, to 
live peaceably and quietly with the family, and not to meddle 
with any affair." 47 

Although at times such menial services as these might be 
part of an overseer's duty, and although at other times the 

43 Kent County, Court Records, 1764, DD No. 4, p. 247. 

44 Baltimore County, Court Records, 1724/5, JS No. TW4, p. 147; 
1720, JS No. C, p. 479- 

45 Kent County, Court Records, 1764, DD No. 4, p. 247. 

48 Court Records, 1722, JS No. TW2, p. 195; Kent County, Court 
Records, JS No. 37, p. 329. 
4T Baltimore County, Court Records, 1722, JS No. TW2, p. 195. 



74 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

office might even be so debased as to be filled by one of the 
more trustworthy slaves, yet in most cases the overseer was 
far from being a menial or even a laborer. So sharply were 
the duties of an overseer distinguished from those of a 
laborer that there are cases in which additional pay was 
claimed for laboring work done during the time of overseer- 
ship. 48 In fact, overseers came from the best of the land- 
less class, perhaps even better than that of the free tenants. 49 
'A landlord was not apt to place slaves, implements, and 
land to the value of several hundred pounds in charge of 
any but competent and reliable men. When the quarter 
was at a great distance from the owner's dwelling planta- 
tion, the overseer filled an especially responsible position. 
He was then not only answerable for the management of 
the plantation, but he was also in a way the owner's personal 
representative, and even looked after such legal matters as 
touched the number of taxables, the road levy, and perhaps 
the poll-tax. 50 Overseers, therefore, seem in many cases to 
have been respected members of the community, and mem- 
bers of the owner's own family are often found acting in 
this capacity. 51 

The responsibility of the overseer's position depended 
somewhat upon the number of slaves or servants placed in 
his charge. This number varied, of course, with the finan- 
cial ability of the owner. It was not unusual to have an 
overseer with but one, two, or three slaves ; and, on the other 
hand, the number of slaves under an overseer sometimes ran 
as high as fifteen or twenty. The average in Charles 

49 Kent County, Court Records, 1764, DD No. 4, p. 115. 

49 Notice the proviso in the statement of Hugh Jones: Servants 
when freed " may work Day-Labour, or else rent a small Plantation 
for a Trifle almost; or else turn Overseers, if they are expert, and 
industrious" (p. 54). 

60 On petition of William Mattingly, overseer for Samuel Hyde, 
of England, four slaves were exempted from taxation (Baltimore 
County, Court Records, 1734, JWS No. 9, p. 356). 

61 G. Harris was overseer on B. Harris's quarter, and Phil. Dowell. 
jr., on Phil Dowell's quarter, according to the Calvert County tax 
list of 1733 (Maryland Historical Society, MSS. file, 122). Richard 
Bennett willed several plantations to the overseers who were living 
on them (Land Office, Wills, DD No. 7, p. 466). 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 75 

County in 1733 was about three taxables, 52 besides the over- 
seer, on each quarter. In Calvert County, which was some- 
what more developed than Charles, the average was at the 
same time nearly six taxables to a quarter. 53 As Calvert 
County seems to have been the most advanced section of the 
colony, it is very probable that in other counties the propor- 
tion of slaves to overseers approached that of Charles 
County more nearly than it did that of Calvert. 

Working land by the overseer system seems to have been 
more profitable than renting it to tenants. The cheap slave 
labor produced so large a surplus of wealth that the land- 
lord and the overseer could divide the profits and each have 
more than he would have had if the land had been rented 
at a fixed sum and worked entirely by the tenant himself. 54 
Under this management the owner could also prevent waste 
of timber and impoverishment of the soil. On the other 
hand, the owner's share of the crops was not always forth- 
coming, and the large landholders may have lost much by 
the delinquency of tenants. 55 Moreover, the more shiftless 
among the overseers were always backward in preparing 
their tobacco for shipment, so that the Lower House urged 
the difficulty experienced by planters in getting this part of 
their crop ready as a sufficient reason for not limiting more 
narrowly the time for shipment. 56 

82 All persons over sixteen years of age except free white women 
were taxables. 

63 These figures are taken from the lists of taxables, which are 
arranged by households and which carefully distinguished quarters 
from dwelling plantations (Maryland Historical Society, MSS. file, 
122, 123). 

54 Jones wrote about 1721 : " They that have not [land] may make 
more Profit by turning Overseers, or by some other better Ways, 
than by Farming" (p. 61). 

65 " Item, whereas several of my Overseers stand largely indebted 
on my Books and I have had part of their shares of the Cropps 
made on my Plantations and the accounts of the said Cropps not 
settled," etc., their debts were discharged (Will of Richard Bennett, 
in Land Office, Wills, DD No. 7, p. 473). 

08 " The Business of Farming and Planting are very much inter- 
mixed in most Parts of the Province, which a good deal retards the 
Planter in preparing his Tobacco for Inspection, and we think, in 
a general way, renders it impracticable to do it by the last of 
June, consistent with the Farming Part of his affairs " (Lower 



?6 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

The amount of land that could be worked by overseers 
was limited only by the amount of capital necessary to secure 
slaves and implements. All the great landholders and 
wealthy men had numerous and sometimes widely scattered 
plantations under this system. Richard Bennett in 1749 
had some twelve or fifteen plantations, with slaves and over- 
seers, scattered from Cecil County on the north to Accomac 
in Virginia on the south. Daniel Dulany, though a resident 
of Annapolis, maintained at least one plantation with ser- 
vants on Wye River. 57 In fact, the regular way of increas- 
ing the scale of cultivation was not so much by enlarging 
the size of the plantation as by establishing separate planta- 
tions under overseers, often at great distances from the 
owner's dwelling. 58 

The acreage of these outlying quarters cannot be discussed 
apart from the question of the acreage of plantations in 
general. This question is one of considerable complexity 
because the colonists had no clear idea of the agricultural unit 
which we now call a plantation or farm, that is, a cultivated 
tract under a single management, with, perhaps, sufficient 
woodland to supply timber for all necessary purposes, and 
clearly set apart from all other similar units. In the colonial 
period, especially in the earlier part, plantations were usually 
clearings in the midst of great forests, and had no fixed 
bounds other than the surrounding woodland. Under these 
conditions the term " plantation " came to be applied to only 
the clearing. Consequently we find many expressions like 
the following, " a tract of two hundred acres on the southern 
end of which is seated a plantation of about forty acres." 
Lacking the idea of a plantation as well as the thing, those 
who made out colonial documents naturally gave very few 
figures for such a unit. 

House Journal, October 25, 1763). By the word "farming" in this 
passage the house undoubtedly means all working of land on shares, 
which will include most overseerships and perhaps some leases. 

OT Advertisement for a runaway servant (Maryland Gazette, Sep- 
tember 16, 1746). 

68 For numerous instances, see any volume of wills or inventories 
or any list of taxables. These separate plantations are designated 
as "quarters." 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 



77 



In examining this subject, therefore, it may be well to con- 
sider first the total amount of land held by each individual, 
and to note after that the amount in each plantation. For- 
tunately, individual holdings for the several counties are 
fully and accurately given in the debt books. 59 From these 
books it appears that, at the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, the average amount of land held by an individual in a 
single county varied from about 250 to 475 acres. In the fron- 
tier counties, such as Cecil and Frederick, the average ran 
high, being 341.9 and 370.1 acres respectively. In Kent, St. 
Mary's, and Worcester, however, counties which had long 
been settled, the average was 279.6, 282, and 255.3 acres 
respectively. On the other hand, the nearer a county lay to 
Annapolis — the center of government and, consequently, of 
the aristocratic class — the larger were the holdings. In 
Anne Arundel the average was 472.8, in Calvert 364.1, and 
in Talbot 60 329.5. 61 

Since many owners had lands scattered in various parts 
of the counties and worked in several plantations, it is evi- 
dent that the average amount of land in each plantation 

w The series of debt books begins at the expiration of the quit- 
rent agreement in 1733 and runs to the Revolution. In them is given 
the name of each landholder in the county, with the tracts and parts 
of tracts held, their acreage, and their quit-rent. Because of the 
confusion into which the organization for collecting the quit-rents 
fell during the period of the commutation, the debt books between 
1733 and 1740 are very inaccurate; after 1740, however, their errors 
are too slight to have any importance in the above calculation. 

60 Talbot County was in close touch with Annapolis by water. 

61 The following table will show these figures more clearly: — 



County 


Year 


Acreage of all 
patented land 


Number of 
landholders 


Average 
holding 


Cecil 


1749 
1760 

1756 
1755 
I75S 
1752 
1755 

1755 
1755 
1754 


131,512 
177,318 
206,935 
288,817 

307,195 
382,237 

351,135 
H3,590 
237,428 
162,006 


348 
634 
628 

938 
1203 
IO32 
730 
312 
692 
567 


37I.9 


Kent 


279.6 


Talbot 


329-5 

307- 9 
255-3 
37o. i 
472.8 


Somerset 


Worcester 


Frederick 


Anne Arundel 


Calvert 


364.1 

343-1 
282 


Charles 


St. Mary's 







yS THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

must be very much smaller than the average holding. This 
unit is the one now generally meant by the words plantation 
and farm, a unit which, as has been said, was not very defi- 
nitely defined in the colonial period. The nearest to such a 
unit that can be found in the records is the tenement. The 
average size of the tenements on Kent Manor in 1766 was 
about 125 acres. 62 Eleven leases on the Carroll estates re- 
corded in Baltimore County between 1739 and 1758 average 
about 118 acres, and 85 leases by Thomas Brerewood re- 
corded between 1740 and 1746 average 106 acres. 63 One 
hundred acres was such a favorite size for leases that nearly 
one fourth of all that are recorded are for that amount. In 
general, the average size of leaseholds ran between 100 and 
150 acres. 

But leases, it may be assumed, were generally for smaller 
tracts than were worked by the landowners themselves. 
Some hints concerning the size of the plantations of the 
landholding class can be had from the appraisements of 
orphans' estates, some of which give the acreage. The 
dwelling plantations in forty-two appraisements of lands in 
Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne, Somerset, Baltimore, and Charles 
counties show an average of about 183 acres. The adver- 
tisements of land for sale which appeared in the Maryland 
Gazette run somewhat larger than this; but here we would 
expect to find an undue proportion of the large tracts of 
speculative lands. Eighteen plantations of which the size 
has been found from various accidental sources show an 
average of 202 acres. These figures agree sufficiently well 
both with each other and with the probabilities of the case 
when compared with the size of the holding on the one side 
and the size of the tenement on the other to lead us to con- 
clude that the average plantation of the middle-class land- 
holder was somewhere between 150 and 200 acres. 

Above the average landholder was the body of landed 
aristocracy, who drew their wealth and prestige from their 

62 Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 3, and bundle 51-2. 

63 Baltimore County, Land Records, Index. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 79 

enormous estates. These properties in the colonial period 
consisted, for the most part, of many scattered tracts, both 
leased out and worked under overseers, rather than of single 
large plantations surrounding the owner's residence and cul- 
tivated under his own eye. The dwelling plantations of 
some of the more important landholders, however, were 
very large. Talbot County was the home of a great many 
of the aristocratic families, and here we should find many of 
the largest plantations. The assessment of 1783 seems to 
have been made in Talbot with greater regard to the plan- 
tation than is shown by previous land records. 6 * Of the 
sixty-seven plantations in this assessment with as much as 
200 acres of cleared land the average size of the total plan- 
tation was about 615 acres. One, owned by Richard Bennett 
Lloyd, contained as much as 3230 acres. This, however, 
was exceptional, as the next largest was but 1468 acres. 
Four others were larger than 1000 acres, and another above 
900 acres. The median of the sixty-seven fell between 462 
and 463 acres. These figures must, however, be taken with 
much caution. In the first place, they come from a time 
— 1783 — much later than that under consideration, and in 
the second place, the assessors seem in many cases to have 
thrown together all of a contiguous tract regardless as to 
whether it was all cultivated by one man or whether it was 
rented out in several tenements. It is almost certain that 
some of the tracts under consideration should be broken up 
in this way. Allowing, therefore, for this error, we may 
safely conclude that the average of the sixty largest planta- 
tions in Talbot County was about 600 acres. It is probable 
that in no other part of the province — except, perhaps, in 
Anne Arundel County — was there such an abundance of 
large farms. 

More important than the size of the plantation, in the 
modern sense of the word, is the size of the clearing. In 
forty-one appraisements of orphans' estates between the 



64 These returns are in the Scharf Papers, box 84, in Maryland 
Historical Society. 



80 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

years 1731 and 1765 which happen to show the size of the 
clearings the range of the cleared land is between 9 acres 
and 325 acres and the average is 67.5 acres. In eighteen 
advertisements in the Maryland Gazette the plantations 
range between 7 acres and 250 acres of cleared land and 
average 82.6 acres. The colonial idea of the proper amount 
of cleared land for a plantation is shown by the fact that 
when the appraisers of orphans' estates permitted the guar- 
dian to develop a plantation out of a tract of woodland be- 
longing to the orphan, they regularly limited the amount of 
land that might be cleared to between 30 and 50 acres. 65 
From the assessments of 1783 we get averages somewhat 
larger than those from advertisements and appraisements. 
The three assessment districts into which Talbot County was 
divided gave average clearings of 90.2, 97.2, and 130.4 acres. 
As this assessment was made about thirty years later than 
the mean date of the orphans' appraisements, it is natural 
that the clearings should run a little larger; in general, the 
assessment supports remarkably well the averages drawn 
from the more limited body of figures. 

In the case of the clearing, as in that of the total size of 
the plantations, we must consider tracts which were above 
the average size. Of the 713 plantations assessed in Talbot 
County in 1783, 6j had as much as 200 acres of arable land. 
The average of these sixty-seven clearings was 322.4 acres, 
and the median fell at 250 acres. The largest three were 
1450, 750, and 700 acres. These figures very likely err by 
being too large, 66 and must be considered as the extreme 

65 Such appraisements may be found in the following records : 
Cecil County, Land Records, 1735, WK No. 2, p. no; Kent County. 
Court Records, JS No. 18, pp. 64, 144; Queen Anne County, Land 
Records, RT No. C, p. 248; Charles County, vol. xlii, p. 611. One 
of the purposes of the appraisers was to protect the orphans' woods 
from waste by the guardian, so that in such a case they would 
naturally make the size of the clearing rather small. 

60 In compiling these figures several tracts credited with more 
than two hundred acres of cleared land have been rejected because 
the remarks show plainly that they were leased out in several 
parcels. Seventeen tracts have been discarded because the owner 
had no slaves. Though this fact does not necessarily prove that 
the land was leased in more than one parcel, the chances are very 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND SI 

limits of plantations in Talbot County. Except Anne Arun- 
del no other county was the seat of so many wealthy land- 
holders as Talbot ; in other counties, therefore, the cultivated 
areas ran somewhat smaller and about 1760 probably seldom 
exceeded 300 acres. 

Since it has been shown that the plantations were generally 
not above 200 acres and that the total holding of each indi- 
vidual ran as high as 250 to 375 acres, the question arises 
as to what form was assumed by the surplus holding. It is 
in order, therefore, to examine the various forms in which 
the landlords held their estates. 

Perhaps nearly one fourth of all the land in the older 
counties was held in parcels of from 50 acres to 250 acres 
by men who owned no other land, and who either by their 
own labor or by that of a few slaves cultivated all their 
clearing. Many other men, who owned tracts somewhat 
larger, rented out one or more plantations grouped about 
their own. Numerous valuations of orphans' estates dis- 
tinguish clearly a dwelling plantation and on the same tract 
sometimes one, sometimes two, and sometimes four or five 
tenements. 67 It was a common practice for men who owned 
larger tracts than they themselves could work to let out par- 
cels of it in this way. 

It must not be supposed, however, that the large land- 
owners, or even those of medium importance, held all or 
most of their land in one parcel. This was the desideratum, 68 
and most owners held lands all within a more or less cir- 
cumscribed neighborhood; but many held land in two or 

great that such was the case, and it will approximate the truth much 
nearer to reject them than to retain them. In a number of other 
cases the slaves were far too few to work a plantation of the size 
indicated, but since it is impossible to distinguish them exactly, 
these tracts have been retained. There is little doubt that many 
of these sixty-seven tracts were in reality several plantations. 

w Queen Anne County, Land Records, RT No. A, p. 16 ; Charles 
County, Court Records, J No. 3, p. 384. 

68 Daniel Carroll by will in 1734 authorized Charles Carroll to sell 
all his lands which did not in one tract exceed five hundred acres 
(Narration to deed in Land Office, Land Records, Liber DD No. 
3. P- 345)- This, however, was possible only to a few who had been 
able to secure large tracts and hold them. 
6 



82 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72Q-I765 

more counties, and some few had plantations scattered well 
over the province. Daniel Dulany possessed one of the 
largest and most scattered estates. As early as 1729 he ad- 
vertised for rent lands in Baltimore, Prince George, and 
Kent counties ; 69 and his later activities extended into Fred- 
erick, Talbot, Queen 'Anne, and other counties. The Car- 
roll family held land in almost every county of the Western 
Shore; 70 Charles Carroll, father of one of the Signers, 
though centering his activities about what is now Howard 
County, also held land in Baltimore, Frederick, Talbot, and 
perhaps several other counties. 71 Men of smaller means, 
such as Philip Key, owned land in Frederick, Charles, and 
St. Mary's counties, and Edward and Caleb Dorsey had pos- 
sessions in Frederick, Baltimore, and Anne Arundel. 

The line between the two shores was somewhat sharply 
drawn; few owned land on both sides of the bay. On the 
Eastern Shore, however, conditions were about the same as 
on the Western. Richard Bennett was, possibly, before the 
middle of the century the greatest landowner in Maryland. 
His will, 72 made in 1749, shows him in possession of over 
thirty plantations scattered from Accomac in Virginia to 
Cecil in Maryland. After the middle of the century the 
greatest landowner on the Eastern Shore was Edward Lloyd. 
The debt books between 1760 and 1766 show that he owned 
360 acres in Cecil, 5216 acres in Kent, 5859 acres in Queen 
Anne, 12,390 acres in Talbot, and 12,467 acres in Dor- 
chester. Within the counties, moreover, the lands were not 
contiguous, but were scattered in parcels. Most large estates 
of the period were acquired by purchasing or patenting 
forest land, and developing it into plantations either by 
means of overseers or by leasing it to tenants. Vacant lands 

69 Maryland Gazette, April 8, 1729. 

70 See the debt books of the various counties. 

"The multitude of Charles Carrolls makes it impossible to be 
certain always which Carroll the debt books mean. See Johns 
Hopkins University Papers, box 38, for Carroll's own statement 
that he spent much money on the lands of his nephew in developing 
them and preparing them for tenants. 

"Land Office, Wills, DD No. 7, P- 466. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 83 

were to be had only in small parcels, and their development, 
consequently, led to the building up of such divided estates 
as those of Dulany and Bennett. 

This method of developing lands depended on the securing 
of tenants and overseers, and therefore it did not become 
a very important movement until the early part of the 
eighteenth century, when the passing of the frontier in the 
older counties was making it difficult to secure vacant land 
and was forcing the landless to accept leases. Between 1720 
and 1730 the method first becomes noticeable. It was then 
that Richard Bennett was accumulating his estate, and be- 
tween about 1720 and 1750 Daniel Dulany amassed his 
wealth in land. Charles Carroll testified that in 1734 the 
vast tracts of Doughoregan, Ely O' Carroll, Chermalira, 
Litterlona, and others did not pay one pound of rent; but 
that through careful management he had by 1764 built up 
a vast roll of nearly fifty thousand pounds of tobacco per 
year. 73 It was by vigorously pushing this method of land 
development at the period when renting first became possible 
that many of the early Maryland fortunes were amassed. 

The great problem in the management of large landed 
estates was the procuring of tenants. Advertisements of 
land for rent were frequently inserted in the Gazette ; some- 
times only a single plantation was offered at once ; and some- 
times large tracts were offered to be leased in parcels. 74 But 
the landlords did not stop with bringing their land to the 
attention of the provincial public; they also advertised in 
other colonies and abroad. Charles Carroll, in defending 
a charge which he had made against his nephew for trouble 
in procuring tenants on the nephew's land, said : " Consider 
that to procure these Tenants I have sollicited & Employ'd 
many people, that I have paid Several Sums out of my 
Pocket to persons who procurred Tenants in particular to 
Mr. Franklin 75 I think about £7. Consider the many letters 

"Papers relating to the case of Carroll v. Carroll, Hill, and 
Waring (Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 38). 

"April 1, 8, 1729; June 24, September 30, 1746; March 10, 1747; 
October 19, 1748. 

"Doubtless Benjamin Franklin, who had a wide correspondence in 
Maryland. 



84 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

I have wrote on the occasion not only to people in this 
Province, but to Ireland & Germany with conditions on 
which I would Rent Lands." 76 Daniel Dulany sent to the 
proprietor a copy of a letter, written by Germans and urg- 
ing their countrymen to come to Maryland, which was, 
doubtless, written and sent at Dulany's instigation and 
expense. 77 Only the owners of the very largest estates, of 
course, resorted to such energetic methods. 

Besides the cost of the land and the expense of procuring 
tenants, a considerable outlay was also necessary for the 
erection of buildings to make the land tenantable. Charles 
Carroll charged his nephew as much as 2620 pounds of 
tobacco (equivalent to about £15 or £20) per tenement for 
the erection of dwellings and tobacco houses. 78 It would 
have cost but little less to allow the tenants two years rent 
free to provide buildings for themselves, for in that case the 
buildings erected might have been much less substantial. It 
required, therefore, a great deal of capital to develop a tract 
by tenanting. It may have been, as Daniel Dulany said, 
that the rents paid no great interest on the total value of the 
tract when developed. 79 The profit of the business lay in 
the great increase made in the value of land by its rescue 
from the wilderness. To some extent, therefore, develop- 
ing land was a speculative business in which the capital in- 
vested had to stand for a long period before the profit was 
reaped. One effect of the necessity for capital in conduct- 
ing these operations was that it limited development on a 
large scale to those who already had wealth or who had 
from other sources an income which was seeking invest- 
ment. We find, consequently, that most of the very great 
landowners were either merchants or public officials who in- 
vested in land the money gained in these other occupations. 
Richard Bennett, for instance, conducted a large mercantile 

76 Papers in Carroll v. Carroll, Hill, and Waring (Johns Hopkins 
University Papers, box 38). 
"Calvert Papers, MS., No. 295^. 
"Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 38. 
79 See p. 99. n. 41. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 85 

business in Queen Anne County; Edward Lloyd was agent 
or receiver-general ; Charles Carroll had his start from his 
father, who attended to the proprietor's affairs in Maryland 
during the period of the royal government ; and Philip Key 
was sheriff of St. Mary's County, member of the Lower 
House, and finally councillor. 

The conditions under which land had to be procured gave 
rise to some of the characteristics of land development. In 
older counties, where the land had for the most part been 
patented long before it became possible to tenant it, few of 
the large grants survived undivided to the time when it was 
possible to bring them into cultivation. Some persons tried 
to increase the size of their tracts by securing the adjoining 
lands. 80 In general the older counties show very few tracts 
as large as a thousand or fifteen hundred acres. In the 
newer counties, however, there were more large tracts. 
Wherever it became possible to secure tenants in a region 
where there was at the time or had recently been large par- 
cels of vacant land, the tracts were less divided, and were, 
consequently, larger. At an early period Augustine Her- 
mann took up a large tract known as Bohemia Manor in 
Cecil County, and rented out much of it to Germans whom 
he brought over from the Delaware. The rapid settlement 
of the rich lands in the forks of the Patuxent and on Elk 
Ridge, combined with Charles Carroll's industry and ability 
in procuring tenants not only from all over Maryland but 
even from Europe, made it possible for him to develop in 
that region tracts, or manors, of from five to ten thousand 
acres each. Thomas Brerewood, who through relationship 
to the proprietor came into possession in 1731 of a tract of 
ten thousand acres in Baltimore County, developed the land 
into a thickly settled estate. 81 

80 The estate of William Cummings, for instance, consisted of the 
following lands : part of Broad Creek, 50 acres ; Slades Addition, 
50 acres; Forfatt, 30 acres; Justice Come at Last, 150 acres; Mill 
Town, 46 acres; and Wolf Neck, 100 acres, all contiguous on the 
northern side of the Severn; and Hazard, 60 acres; Hood's Hall, 
100 acres; part of Ben's Luck, 25 acres; and part of Freeborn's 
Progress, 135 acres, all contiguous on Elk Ridge (Maryland Gazette, 
July 9, 1752). 

"Baltimore County, Land Records, Index. 



86 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

The only part of the province in which tenants could be 
obtained before the frontier had receded was what is now 
Frederick and Washington counties. In all other sections 
patenting of land ran ahead of settlement,- but about 1730, 
while Frederick was still an unbroken forest with practi- 
cally no land under patent, there suddenly began to pour 
across the northern border a stream of German immigrants, 
thoroughly skilled in small farming, without money, without 
knowledge of the English language, and without the tradi- 
tions of land ownership and broad acres characteristic of 
the English-American. Here was an ideal tenantry. Un- 
able to purchase land, not knowing how to patent it, with 
legal restrictions on their ability to dispose of it, and with 
no great aversion to becoming tenants, the Germans played 
directly into the hands of land speculators, who here for 
the first time found both the land and the tenantry, needing 
only the speculator's efforts to bring the two together. 

Under these conditions there occurred a boom of western 
land speculation and development comparable to many sim- 
ilar movements of modern times. So rapidly was the coun- 
try developed that what had been almost all forest in 1730 
was erected into a county in 1748, and by 1755 had become 
the second county in the province in population. 82 The 
amount of speculative development made possible by this 
growth is evident. Almost every wealthy man on the 
Western Shore became interested in Frederick lands. In 
1740 John Diggs was granted a warrant for 5000 acres in 
this county, with the condition that he settle thereon at 
least ten families. 83 In 1763 he still owned 3374 acres in 
Frederick County. Some other large owners in Frederick 
about 1763 were Philip Key, 5333 acres, Edward Diggs, 
5505 acres, Richard Snowden, 6588 acres, Edward Dorsey, 
9970 acres, and James Brooks, 22,834 acres. Certainly 
several of these men and possibly all of them resided out- 

82 The census of 1755 gave Baltimore County a population of 
17,238 and Frederick County, 13,970 (Hill Papers, Miscellaneous, in 
Maryland Historical Society). 

83 Land Office, Warrants, LG No. A, p. 192. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND 87 

side of Frederick County. Much Frederick land was held 
on pure speculation without any improvement. William 
Eddis said of the county in general that the land was to a 
considerable extent taken up with an eye to the future, and 
people were content to clear gradually. 84 The tax collector 
in 1757 reported to a committee of the Lower House that of 
the 537,500 acres of land patented in Frederick County, 62,- 
042 acres of uncultivated land were owned by people resid- 
ing in Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Prince George, and Charles 
counties. 85 We have no estimate of how much cultivated 
land was held by non-residents. 

Development of western land was in character very much 
like that of land in the older counties. Men secured large 
tracts and rented them out in parcels of from fifty to one 
hundred and fifty acres each. In Frederick County, how- 
ever, the helplessness of the tenants, caused by their poverty, 
by their ignorance of language and customs, and by the re- 
moteness of their situation, led the landowner in many cases 
to assume the role of a patron. Two instances of this are 
particularly interesting. 

Daniel Dulany was one of the first as well as one of the 
largest and most successful land dealers in Frederick 
County. When he first took up large tracts in this region, it 
was generally thought that he was on the road to financial 
ruin, 86 but on his land was formed one of the earliest settle- 
ments. This start, combined with the favorable location, 
soon created on his property the metropolis of the Monocacy 
Valley. In 1745 Dulany himself laid out a town, which he 
called Frederick ; he also gave land for churches, and seems 
to have assumed a sort of guardianship over the com- 
munity. 87 

"Letters from America, p. 129. 

"Lower House Journal, April 28, 1757. 

86 Eddis, pp. 98, 99. 

81 A letter signed by twenty-five German settlers reads in part: 
" One of the Principal Gentlemen of this Country (Mr. Dulany) who 
lives at Annapolis, the Capital of this Province, was so kind as to 
Assist us w th 306 Pistoles & to free us from ye Captain's Power, 
we are Perswaded that this Gentleman will be Serviceable to Aid 
and Assist all Germans that will Settle in this Province" (Calvert 
Papers, MS., No. 295^). 



88 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, 1720-1765 

Another place which developed in a manner very similar to 
Frederick was Hagerstown. Jonathan rfagar, a German 
immigrant, settled in that region and took up land. Fol- 
lowing the lead of Dulany, he built up his settlement, and 
after the close of the Indian wars laid out a town. Eddis 
writes : " A German adventurer, whose name is Hagar, pur- 
chased a considerable tract of land in this neighborhood, and 
with much discernment and foresight, determined to give 
encouragement to traders, and to erect proper habitations 
for the stowage of goods, for the supply of the adjacent 
country. His plan succeeded : he has lived to behold a mul- 
titude of inhabitants on land which he remembered unoccu- 
pied; and he has seen erected in places appropriated by 
him for that purpose, more than a hundred comfortable 
edifices, to which the name of Hagar's Town is given, in 
honour of the intelligent founder." 88 

88 Pp- 133-34- See also Sollers, " Jonathan Hagar," in Society for 
the History of the Germans in Maryland, second annual report. 



CHAPTER IV 



MANORS 



Some of the large tracts of rented land both in the back 
country and in tidewater Maryland — though mostly in the 
latter — were dignified with the name manor. In the early 
days of the colony an attempt had been made to introduce the 
manorial system with its full complement of manorial rights ; x 
but perhaps because of the impossibility of obtaining tenants, 
the system completely failed. When it finally became possible 
to secure tenants, some of these manors which had continued 
undivided were leased out, as they were originally intended 
to be, and the name manor still clung to them. 2 Some few 
of the later grantees — Charles Carroll, for instance — also 
called their tracts manors. Though there had never been 
any formal revocation of the manorial rights granted with 
the early manors, those rights had long been unused and as 
good as forgotten, while the later grants never carried any 
such privileges. 

The manors of later times in Maryland, therefore, dif- 
fered in no way from other large holdings. They were 
simply a number of tenements grouped together, the tenants 
of which had no relations with each other and had only the 
ordinary contractual relations with the landlord. The 
manor was a unit only in that it was held by virtue of a 
single patent, bore a single name, and was, in some cases at 
least, managed as a unit by the owner. Charles Carroll 
certainly had several stewards 3 to deal with his tenants — 

1 J. Johnson, " Old Maryland Manors," in Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity Studies, series I, no. vii. 

2 George Plater in 1729 advertised that a resurvey had revealed 
•many squatters on St. Joseph's Manor, St. Mary's County, and that 

he was inclined to lease it out in small parcels (Maryland Gazette, 
April 1, 1729). 

These stewards were, perhaps, little more than tobacco receivers 
such as were employed by most merchants and others who received 

89 



90 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

perhaps a steward for each of his manors. The rent also 
on Carroll's manors was made payable at the inspection 
house of the manor. 4 Since, aside from these, slight ad- 
ministrative conveniences, the manors did not differ from 
any other leased lands, their importance was more spectacu- 
lar than real. In fact, during the later colonial period the 
name was the only distinctive feature of such a possession. 
The use of the word manor, however, has helped to pre- 
serve some of the tracts bearing it from the rapid dismem- 
berment which overtook other lands. When tracts came 
to be worked in several distinct parcels, it was but natural 
that they should soon be regarded as mere compounds of 
those parcels, and on but slight occasion they would break 
down into their component parts. Throughout the colonial 
period Maryland was going through this process of dividing 
up the unwieldy tracts in which a great deal of the land had 
been patented, and making the units of ownership conform 
more closely to the economic unit in which it had always 
been found convenient to cultivate the soil. In many cases, 
no doubt, the tenants who rented parts of larger tracts ulti- 
mately bought their tenements ; in other cases divisions 
among heirs split up large tracts. The number of deeds 
reading "part of a tract" far exceeds the number of those 
reading " all that tract." In this process manors, as well as 
tracts without that title, often went to pieces, 5 but the mere 
psychological fact of their being thought of as units no 
doubt prolonged the life of many of them. For sentimental 
reasons a manor would be kept whole until dire financial 
difficulties compelled its division. From these causes some 

tobacco in large quantities. They were paid two shillings sixpence 
sterling for each nine hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco re- 
ceived by them. Carroll tells us that he himself transacted much 
of the business that we usually associate with the duties of a 
steward. 

4 Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 38. 

6 In 1755, for instance, Wollaston Manor in Charles County, 1098 
acres, was divided by arbitrators into six plantations of 183 acres 
each and assigned to six different owners (Charles County, Land 
Records, A No. 3, pt. 2, p. 353). 



MANORS 9 1 

of the old manors have survived almost intact to the present 
day. 6 

A prominent example, in some ways typical of private 
land speculation and development in Maryland, is to be 
found in the proprietary manors. These lands were manors 
only in the same sense that large private holdings were 
entitled to that name. They were tracts withheld by the pro- 
prietor from grant by the land office and leased out in par- 
cels like the lands of private owners. 

The first proprietor of Maryland, in order to share in the 
benefits of the increase in land values, inaugurated the 
policy of reserving certain land for himself ; and following 
the tendency of that day, he erected these lands into manors. 
In the instructions to Governor Charles Calvert in 1673 it 
was stated that orders had several times been given to lay 
out in each county at least two manors of at least six 
thousand acres apiece for the private use of his lordship and 
his heirs. These orders, the proprietor complained, had 
never been strictly carried out, " notw th standing he looks 
upon it as a thing of very greate Concernm* to him & his 
posterity." 7 Though some manors had probably been 
already laid out in accordance with the earlier instructions, 
this was the beginning of the maintenance of manors as a 
regular system. 8 

In accordance with the example of the private manors, 
the proprietary manors, after being carefully surveyed and 
entered on the land records, were offered to be leased to 
tenants in small holdings. 9 Leasing of manors, it seems, 

'Doughoregan Manor in Howard County is still undivided. 
'Archives, vol. xv, p. 31. 

8 Secretary Calvert, writing in 1752, stated the motives of the 
proprietor in this matter as follows: "It was Plann'd by the first 
Proprietary to inform his successors, that by reserving Judicially 
particular Parcels of Lands in and about the Province, . . . such 
Premises would in time make the Demand of them Lands very 
valuable, and one of the chiefest Recompence for his and their 
great Expence and Labour for the Enlargement of the Empire and 
Dominion of Great Britain" (Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 148). 

9 The land council in 1684 was instructed upon the expiration of 
any lease within a manor to renew it for five years on the same 
terms as formerly granted (Archives, vol. xvii, p. 259). 



92 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

was not carried on to any great extent during the seven- 
teenth century. Perhaps, as has been said before, this was 
due to the abundance of cheap land, which attracted those 
persons who in other countries became the tenant class. 
During the royal period, moreover, the whole system seems 
to have been neglected and allowed to go to pieces. The 
manors were left with few tenants, squatters took possession, 
boundary lines were forgotten, and neighboring landholders 
encroached until, it is said, one manor was almost entirely 
lost. 10 

From this state of dilapidation the manors began to revive 
soon after the restoration of the province to Lord Balti- 
more. Conditions were then such as made it possible to 
secure tenants, and the proprietor, like other landholders, 
began to turn this to account by letting out more and more 
of his land. From all his manors in 1731 the proprietor 
received only eighty-five rents, but four of which came 
from Kent Manor. 11 In 1764 Kent Manor alone contained 
fifty-seven tenements, most of which were rented. 12 

The terms of the leases under which manor lands were 
held resembled in many respects the leases of private land. 
The periods ran from five to twenty-one years or for three 
lives, with a strong tendency in favor of three lives and 
twenty-one years. The proprietor generally refused to 

"The following - , written in 1729, is a description of the manors: 
" I have heretofore mentioned the necessity of Resurveying your 
Manors, without which much of them will soon be lost. Many 
daily Incroach on them, and the Evidences that Can only prove 
bounded trees, as daily grow Old and Drop off. Your Orders to 
your Agent therein will I think be of the Utmost Consequence to 
yr. Landed Interest, and not for the Above reasons to be Delayd. 
Your Mannor of Pangayah" is they say already Swallow' d up, for 
the people pretend, that no one knows where to find it" (Calvert 
Papers, No. 2, p. 79). So little regard was paid to the manors that 
in 1730 the judges of the land office thought it necessary to enter a 
resolution to the effect that as several persons had attempted to 
secure warrants for lands heretofore supposed to be manors, it 
was the opinion of the board that such lands should not be taken 
up but should be held as reserved to his lordship's use (Land Office, 
Warrants, EE, p. 64). 

"Lord Baltimore's account book, 1731 (Calvert Papers, MS., No. 
912). 

"Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 47 and bundle 51-2. 



MANORS 93 

grant leases for any longer terms. About 1752 the tenants 
of Anne Arundel Manor tried to obtain leases for ninety- 
nine years renewable for ever, which would have been 
almost equivalent to granting fee simple title under a quit- 
rent equal to the rent they had been paying on the manor. 
This, it will be observed, would have defeated the object 
of the system by turning over to the tenants all benefit from 
an increase in value. The proposition was, therefore, flatly 
refused, and President Tasker was strictly ordered to " Be- 
ware of the first Step, in fixing Rents." 13 By this policy in 
respect to the period of leases the proprietor wished to pre- 
serve the power to increase the rent of manors as land 
increased in value. 

The rent reserved by leases of manor lands in the earlier 
part of the eighteenth century was almost uniformly ten 
shillings per hundred acres. Sometimes one or more capons 
were added, and usually an alienation fine equal to two 
years' rent was imposed. In addition, there were often pro- 
visions requiring the erection of dwellings — which were usu- 
ally thirty feet long by twenty feet wide with a brick chim- 
ney — and the setting out and maintaining of one hundred 
apple trees. The last group of requirements were, obviously, 
included only in leases of unimproved land. 14 As the cen- 
tury advanced, land became more valuable, and the pro- 
prietor exercised his right to advance the rents as leases 
expired. On the more valuable manors rents were pushed 
up first to twenty shillings, then to £3, and finally a small 
number brought £5 per hundred acres. 15 As early as 1743 
Benjamin Tasker wrote that " almost the meanest " land 
on North East Manor in Cecil County would bring twenty 
shillings per hundred acres. 16 In 1754 rents on manors in 
Baltimore and Frederick counties were raised to twenty 

"Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 148. 

14 See a number of leases of manor lands in the Johns Hopkins 
University Papers, box 3. Most land record books for the various 
counties will also show such leases. 

18 See " Answers to Queries in the London Chronicle," prepared by 
Secretary Ridout in 1758 (Calvert Papers, MS., No. 596). 

"Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 101. 



94 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

shillings. 17 The war which broke out about this time led 
to incessant Indian raids on the frontiers, and undoubtedly 
retarded the advance of manors not only in Frederick 
County but also in Baltimore ; and there may have been no 
further advance in the rent of these manors. Anne Arundel, 
however, was far enough removed from the seat of war to 
make possible in 1755 an advance in Arundel Manor rents 
from £3 15s. to £5 per hundred acres, but some of the sur- 
rounding reserved lands had to be allowed the tenants with 
each tract leased at this rate. 18 

After the restoration, when it was seen how much the 
proprietor had profited by the increased value of his manor 
lands, and especially, about the middle of the century, when 
leases had made the manors sources of a considerable imme- 
diate income, it became the policy of the proprietor to ex- 
tend the system. By this time the old idea of a manor as 
a separate legal unit had died out, and the objects formerly 
reached by the erection of a manor were now frequently 
gained by merely reserving the land, that is, instructing the 
officials of the land office not to issue warrants for any 
land within a prescribed area. This method was also some- 
times employed to limit the area open to settlement so as to 
force population into sections where it was desired. 

As early as 1724 a manor of ten thousand acres was laid 
out on the Potomac; 19 and in 1731 the land office began to 
extend the old manors by systematically reserving all lands 
that might fall escheat or forfeit within three miles of any 
existing manor. 20 A similar reserve was entered in 1739 
on all lands within five miles of Annapolis. 21 A large exten- 
sion of the manors seems to have been contemplated about 
1754, but the project failed because the surveyors could find 
no unpatented tracts large enough except in Frederick 
County, or on the barrens of what are now Baltimore and 

"Archives, vol. vi, p. 71. 

18 Ibid., vol. vi, pp. 161, 294. 

19 Kilty, p. 229. 

20 Ibid., p. 101. 

21 Land Office, Warrants, LG No. A, p. 64 ; Kilty, p. 236. 



MANORS 95 

Carroll counties, and possibly in the lower part of the East- 
ern Shore. None of these lands were thought worth re- 
serving except those in Frederick County, where there were 
already two large manors. 22 In 1760 it was decided to lay out 
another manor in Frederick County, and again no unpat- 
ented tract of five thousand acres could be found except in 
the extreme western part of the province; but in 1764 a 
tract of ten thousand acres was reserved west of Fort Cum- 
berland. 23 An account of the manors on the Western Shore, 
apparently made out about 1764, shows over one hundred 
thousand acres of manor and reserved land on that shore 
alone. 24 

Control of this vast estate was entrusted to a very inad- 
equate organization. In the seventeenth century the man- 
agement of manors seems to have been left at first to the 
governor and later to the land council. During the royal 
period the agent took charge of all the affairs of the propri- 
etor. It is difficult to say what officers were put in charge 
of the manors immediately after the restoration. There was 
no organized system of control, but some persons seem to 
have had special duties concerning them. Bennett Lowe of 
St. Mary's County in 1722 is found empowered to lease all 
the manors on the Eastern Shore, 25 yet the officials of the 
land office seem to have been the persons who laid out new 
manors. 26 By the instructions to Governor Ogle in 1733 he 
was empowered, with the advice of the agent, to lease any 
manors or reserves, to appoint stewards or other officers for 
the same, and to determine what gratuities should be al- 
lowed these stewards. He was also empowered to deter- 
mine the conditions on which land would be granted on each 

22 Archives, vol. vi, p. 52. 

23 Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 370, 402; Kilty, p. 241. 
34 Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 40. 

28 Preamble of a lease recorded in Queen Anne County (Land 
Records, JK No. B, p. 119). 

29 Additional instructions to Philemon Lloyd in 1724 commend 
him for having laid out a manor on the Potomac. Quoted by 
Kilty, p. 229. 



g6 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

manor, and to notify the steward thereof. 27 From this 
grew up a system for the control of manors. 

Under the fully developed plan the determination of large 
questions relating to terms of leases, sales of manor land, 
and the laying out of new manors was left to the governor 
and the agent, who frequently acted only after direct com- 
munication with the proprietor. In laying out new manors 
the initiative usually came from the proprietor through an 
instruction either to the governor or to the agent, who in 
turn sent word to the judges of the land office to issue no 
more patents for land within the prescribed limits. 28 All 
special matters relating to manors, such as special surveys, 
were managed by the governor under direct instructions 
from the proprietor. 

The routine work of finding tenants, leasing lands, and 
collecting the rents was left to the stewards of the various 
manors. 29 These officers were given, by way of compensa- 
tion, free tenure of one tenement on the manor ; but it must 
not be thought that the steward always occupied this tene- 
ment in person. One man was frequently the steward of 
several manors. Young Parran, for instance, was at one 
time in charge of no less than eleven manors in Charles and 
St. Mary's counties. 80 When manor land was leased, the 
steward ran the lines of the tenement, made out a certificate, 
and drew a lease in duplicate. These were sent to the agent, 
who, if he approved, signed the leases himself, secured the 
governor's signature, and returned one of the duplicates to 
the steward to be delivered to the tenant. Each steward 
was supposed to keep a roll on which all leases were entered 
and which showed the amounts of rent due. According to 

21 Archives, vol. xxviii, pp. 67-68. 

28 For entries of such instructions, see Land Office, Warrants, EE, 
PP- 392, 526. 

39 Collington Manor in Prince George's County seems to have had 
no steward, but to have had its rents collected by the sheriff of the 
county. This condition, however, may have been but temporary. 
See a paper marked "A State of the Manors on the Western 
Shore" (Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 40). 

30 A State of the Manors on the Western Shore (Johns Hopkins 
University Papers, box 40). 



MANORS 97 

this roll the rents were collected and turned over to the 
agent. 31 

The defects of this system are evident, as it provided no 
effective supervision of the manors, and it was to nobody's 
interest to see them tenanted and well managed. Finding 
and selecting tenants, as we have seen, was the most serious 
duty of those who would rent out land. This work was 
sadly neglected by the stewards, who, far from being en- 
couraged to spend money or effort in securing tenants, found 
it actually to their interest to neglect to do so. Consequently, 
with no incentive to lead the stewards to an energetic dis- 
charge of their duties and with no supervision to force them 
to it, the proprietor's manors were permitted to fall into 
neglect and disorder. 

The fact that rents on manors were somewhat lower than 
those on private lands led perhaps to a supply of tenants 
who applied for land of their own accord. Nevertheless, the 
manors were never entirely leased out, and Governor Sharpe 
suggested that the stewards should be encouraged to adver- 
tise for tenants. 32 The collection of rents seems also to 
have been neglected by the stewards. Agricultural tenants 
under fixed rents always experience years of failure when 
they are unable to pay, but the manor tenants seem to have 
been allowed to fall into arrears at times when there was no 
excuse for it. More important, however, than either of 
these two abuses was the familiar complaint that the tenants 
pillaged the land. In 1754, as we have seen, Sharpe wrote 
that it was necessary to protect the manors from exhaustion 
by inserting a clause in the leases restricting the amount of 
tobacco to be planted during the last three years of the 
tenancy. 33 The plunder of timber, also, was sometimes re- 
strained by lease provisions that no timber should be sold; 
but tenements were often cleared up unduly in order to have 
the land in cultivation. According to an appraisement of 
Kent Manor made about 1765, out of fifty-seven tenements 

31 Archives, vol. ix, pp. 407-408. 
33 Ibid., vol. ix, p. 63. 
33 Ibid., vol. vi, p. 38. 
7 



£8 THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

only nineteen had sufficient timber. 34 In 1754 Secretary 
Calvert wrote to Edward Lloyd concerning the manors as 
follows: "Y r observation of the IlRreatment of the Pro- 
prietor's Manors & the Tenements is so glaring abuse of 
[by] former Gov rs . & Agents Receiver Gen 13 , as seems to 
cancel obligation for them; [because of] their Suffering the 
Manors & Reserved Lands [to be] Let under no conditions 
of Restriction upon the Tenants, the Lands have been im- 
poverish' d & Pillaged of the Timber, that occasions them 
Un-Tenanted." 35 

The loudest complaint against the management of manors 
was caused by the confusion of boundaries which resulted 
from inaccurate surveys and neglect of the preservation of 
leases. So great was the confusion into which the manors 
had fallen in this respect that when the proprietor about 
1757 ordered surveys and plats to be made of all his manors, 
the surveyors found so many leases missing and so many 
lines intersecting that the project resulted in an almost com- 
plete failure. 36 Governor Sharpe wrote to Secretary Cal- 
vert on this subject as follows : " I have already observed 
to you that the Mannors have never been managed after 
so regular & orderly a Method as they ought some of the 
Leases have been Lodged with the Agent & of others he has 
not even seen copies. Many of the Stewards have been 
heretofore extremely negligent & some of them resided at 
so great a Distance from the Mannours which they were 
appointed to take Care of that perhaps they never or very 
seldom saw them, & indeed the Sallaries allowed were too 
small to encourage a Person of Credit to undertake that 
Duty or to induce any one to execute it with Dilligence." 37 

In spite of mismanagement and disorder the manors paid 
a handsome revenue. Before the restoration no present 
returns were expected, the only hope being for the future; 
but when leasing began in earnest, the revenues mounted 

"Johns Hopkins University Papers, box 47. 
^Calvert Papers, No. 2, p. 180. 
88 Archives, vol. vi, p. 522 ; vol. ix, p. 52. 
37 Ibid., vol. ix, p. 62. 



MANORS 99 

rapidly. In 1731 the total receipt from manors, including 
fines and several payments of back rent, was £135 18s. io^d. 
sterling, of which about £35 came from the Principio Iron 
Company in payment for lands to supply wood to the iron 
works. 38 By 1761 the revenue from this source was more 
than iiooo. 39 Moreover, many tenements had been leased in 
the early days at low rents which were now gradually being 
increased as the leases were renewed. On Anne Arundel 
Manor, where, perhaps, rents were at their highest point, 
the manor rent-roll in 1755 amounted to £310 10s. 3d., — 
almost exactly one half of the quit-rent from the county. 40 
Had a little more attention been given to the development 
of these lands they might easily have been made to rival 
the quit-rent in the production of revenue. 

Notwithstanding their productivity, the proprietor in 1764 
suddenly resolved to sell all his manors. As late as April, 
1764, orders to lay out new manors or reserves had given 
promise of not only a continuation but even an extension of 
the system. What led Secretary Calvert and Frederick, 
Lord Baltimore, to this sudden reversal of policy it is diffi- 
cult to say. They may have been influenced by the argument 
of Daniel Dulany that the revenue from manors was not 
sufficient to pay interest on the capital involved. 41 A hun- 

88 Account of Lord Baltimore's Revenues (Calvert Papers, MS., 
No. 912). 

38 Account of Lord Baltimore's Revenues (Calvert Papers, MS., 
No. 977). 

40 Anne Arundel Rent-Roll, 1755 (Calvert Papers, MS., No. 899). 

41 On September 10, 1764, Dulany wrote to Calvert as follows : — 
" In a few years there will be very little vacant Land, & there- 
fore there will be probably more Attention bestow'd upon the Im- 
provement of the manors, or reserved Lands. Every Gentleman 
who lets out Land in this Country, knows, how difficult it is, with 
the utmost Care, to make any considerable profit by that scheme, 
& how impracticable it is, to get an annual Rent equal to half the 
Interest w ch wou'd arise from the money, for which the Land wou'd 
sell, or to prevent the Abuses of Tenants in the Commission of 
waste ... If Landlords on the Spot find little profit & suffer much 
from waste & Destruction of Timber, it may be easily imagin'd, 
that his Lordship finds less, & suffers more ... If it be a fact, 
w ch no one can controvert, that the Rent even when punctually paid, 
falls short considerably of the Interest of the money for which the 
Land wou'd sell — if his Lordship makes less Profit by his Leases. 
& suffers more from the abuses of waste, & the Destruction of 



IOO THE LAND SYSTEM IN MARYLAND, I72O-I765 

dred acre tenement worth £100 was not profitable, it was 
argued, when renting for only £5 per year and suffering an 
unavoidable waste of timber and fertility. This argument, 
however, leaves out of account the increase in the value of 
land, which had already made the manors a rich domain 
and by which they were steadily becoming more valuable. 
Governor Sharpe opposed Dulany, and held that if men in 
the colony thought it profitable to purchase land at high rates 
as they were doing, merely with a view of leasing it out later 
when patent land could not be obtained and rents were 
higher, it must be to the interest of the proprietor to retain 
what manors he had. 42 Perhaps the most potent argument 
for the sale of the manors was that the step seemed to afford 
a source of ready money, and the spendthrift proprietor 
never let the interests of posterity interfere with the in- 
terests of the present. 

In 1765 orders were received to sell six manors in Charles, 
St. Mary's, and Somerset counties, totalling 28,530 acres, and 
all reserved lands that were not cultivated. The proprietor 
seems to have thought that these manors were entirely waste, 
and Governor Sharpe, on learning that all were in large 
part tenanted, seems to have delayed exposing them for sale 
until he could inform the proprietor of this fact. 43 The 
proprietor's reply was to appoint a commission of three — 
Sharpe, Dulany, and Jordan — to sell all manor lands, waste 
or cultivated. 44 

Timber, than other Gentlemen upon the spot generally do — if He 
loses the quit-rent, & the casual Profits of Alienation-fines, & 
Escheats by reserving his Lands, a loss to w ch Others are not sub- 
ject — it wou'd seem that it wou'd redound more to his Benefit to sell, 
than retain them. It is true Land may rise in its value ; but of that 
there is not a very near prospect to those who reflect what immense 
Tracts of Land are now to be settled in America in Consequence 
of our late Acquisitions & that Land like every other Commodity 
is valuable, or not, in proportion to its Plenty, or scarcity & must 
rise very considerably indeed, in the Course of twenty years to 
compensate for the Loss of the above Interest, the common quit- 
rent, the Alienation-fine & the chance of Escheats in the mean 
time" (Calvert Papers, No. 2, pp. 242-243). 

42 Archives, vol. xiv, p. 204. 

"Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 189-93, 202-4. 

^Council Records, JR and US, pp. 415-20; Kilty, p. 242. 



MANORS 10 1 

Under this commission during the next few years much 
land was sold, but the demand was not so great as had been 
expected. Very few bidders appeared at the sales, and as 
the commissioners were forbidden to sell for less than ten 
shillings per acre, the lands had repeatedly to be withdrawn. 
Sharpe wrote in October, 1766, that at a sale at which the 
Queen Anne Manor and two parcels of escheated land in 
Anne Arundel County were offered, no bidders appeared 
except for one of the escheated tracts, for which the price 
went as high as thirty-one shillings per acre. For this 
apathy Sharpe assigned two reasons: "the Scarcity of 
Money in the Province is at present so great that few 
People have much to command, & the Tenants who if they 
had Money could afford to give more for their respective 
Tenements than any other Persons are in general very poor, 
& their Neighbours who are able to purchase seem to think 
it would be ungenerous to purchase over their Heads as they 
term it." 45 

The effect of these partial sales and withdrawals was 
merely to intersperse patented lands among what had pre- 
viously been solid tracts of manor, and to demoralize the 
whole system. The attempt to sell was given up after a few 
years, and what lands were left unsold were retained by 
the proprietor until the Revolution. This interval was too 
short and too troubled for the proprietor to formulate any 
very definite policy toward the manors. 

45 Archives, vol. xiv, p. 335. 



INDEX 



Agent, control of, over manors, 
96. 

Alienation fines, evasion of, 30; 
opposition to, 31 ; on devises, 
31; payable in tobacco, 34; col- 
lection of, 40. 

Anne Arundel Manor, 93. 

Assembly, does not interfere in 
land affairs, 18-19. 

Beake, Thomas, 14. 

Bennett, Richard, scattered es- 
tate of, 76, 82, 83. 

Bladen, Governor, states amount 
of quit-rents, 48; refuses to 
accept commutation bill, 50. 

Bohemia Manor, 85. 

Bordley, on escheats, 29. 

Boundaries, difficulty of main- 
taining, 24; marks of, 25; com- 
missions to determine, 25; 
commissions to collect evi- 
dence for, 27; on proprietary 
manors, 98. 

Boundary trees, penalty for de- 
stroying, 27. 

Brooks, James, 86. 

Buildings, cost of, 84; on pro- 
prietary manors, 93. 

Calvert, Benedict Leonard, letter 
on commutation act, 35, 35 n. 

Calvert, Cecilius, made secretary, 
11, 11 n. ; complains of waste 
on manors, 70, 98. 

Calvert, Governor Charles, 
speech of, 35; instructed to 
lay out manors, 91. 

Carroll, Charles, not to divide 
warrants, 17; scattered lands 
of, 82, 83 ; methods of pro- 
curing tenants, 83-84; manors 
of, 80-9.0. 

Carroll family, scattered estate 
of, 82. 

Caution money, amount of, 9; 
effect of variations of, 56. 

Charles, Lord Baltimore, agrees 
to accept tobacco, 34; fails to 



improve collection of quit- 
rents, 51. 

Charles County, average size of 
grant in, 58. 

Charter of Maryland, in regard 
to land, 9; on escheats, 28. 

Clearings, size of, 79-Si- 

Code of 1715, boundary law of, 

25. 

Coin, rates of, 42-43; difficulty 
in procuring, 50. 

Commission to sell manors, 100. 

Commutation act, for alienation 
fines, 30; passed, 34; dissatis- 
faction with, 35-37; inequali- 
ties of, 36 ; failure to continue, 
39; petition for renewal, 45; 
renewal defeated by Governor 
Bladen, 50; demand for, les- 
sens, 50. 

Conditions of plantation, pro- 
vide for granting of land, 9; 
quit-rent in, 33. 

Conococheaque Manor, 61. 

Debt books, 77, 77 n. 

Deeds, enrollment of, 30, 32. 

Diggs, Edward, 86. 

Diggs, John, 86. 

Disclaimers of land, 59. 

Dorsey, Caleb, 82. 

Dorsey, Edward, 82, 86. 

Dulany, Daniel, sr., suggests 
alienation fine on devises, 31; 
scattered estate of, 82, 83; 
speculation in Frederick 
County, 87. 

Dulany, Daniel, jr., opposes in- 
crease of land charges, 12; on 
land office fees, 18; suggests 
importance of alienation fines, 
32; on value of manor land, 
61 ; on low returns from 
rented land, 70-71 ; advises 
sale of manors, 99 n. 

Eastern Shore, favors commuta- 
tion of quit-rents, 38-39; del- 
egates from, attempt to renew 



103 



104 



INDEX 



quit-rent commutation, 46-47. 

Eddis, William, on speculation 
in Frederick . County, 87 ; ac- 
count of Hagerstown, 88. 

Engrossing of land, 65-66. 

Enrollment of transfers of land, 
30. 

Escheats, definition of, 28; op- 
position to, 29-30; discovery 
of, 29. 

Estates, scattering of, 82-83. 

Examiner general, 14. 

Farmers of quit-rents, appoint- 
ment of, 40; complaints against, 
43-44; must advertise rates 
for gold and silver, 44; re- 
newal of contracts of, 51. 

Forest land, value of, 61. 

Frederick, Lord Baltimore, at- 
tempts to increase revenues, 
10; attempts to increase rev- 
enue from alienations, 32; has 
sheriffs collect quit-rents, 52. 

Frederick City, foundation of, 
87. 

Frederick County, rapid devel- 
opment of, 86; lands held by 
non-residents, 87. 

Frontier, disappearance of, at 
tidewater, 67. 

Gale, Levin, 14. 

Germans, move south from 
Pennsylvania, 12; first immi- 
gration of, avoids Maryland, 
57; tenant class in Frederick, 
86. 

Gold. See Coin. 

Governor, control of, over 
manors, 96. 

Grants of land. See land 
grants. 

Gresham, John, 15. 

Griffith, Edward, 14. 

Guilford, Lord, 34- 

Hagar, Jonathan, 88. 

Hagerstown, foundation of, 88. 

Hart, Governor, suggests com- 
mutation act, 34; upholds com- 
mutation act, 37. 

Heriot, 31 n. 

Hermann, Augustine, 85. 

Holding, size of, 77, 77 n. 



Improvements, as part of rent, 
69. 

Jennings, Edmund, 10, 14. 
Jones, Hugh, on value of land, 

60; on amount of renting, 67; 

on amount of rent, 69. 

Key, Philip, scattered lands of, 
82; large holdings in Frede- 
rick County, 86. 

Land, granting of, 9; price of, 
9-12 ; back lands, 12-13 ; organ- 
ization of land office, 13-18; 
Lower House and land busi- 
ness, 18-19; surplus lands, 19- 
24; boundaries, 24-27; the 
escheat, 28-30; the alienation 
fine, 30-33; the quit-rent, 33- 
59; value of land, 60-61; 
speculation in, 61-65; large 
holdings of, 65-67; leasing 
and farming of, 67-72; the 
overseer system, 72-76; acre- 
age of plantations, 76-79; size 
of clearings, 79-8 1 ; scattering 
of lands, 81-83; tenants, 83- 
84; buildings, 84; profits, 84- 
85; size of tracts in older 
counties, 85; development of 
Frederick and Washington 
counties, 86-88; manors, 89- 
101. See also Alienation fines, 
Manors, etc. 

Land development, expense of, 
83-84; limited to capitalist 
class, 84-85. 

Land grants, size of, 58. 

Land office, organization of, 13- 
15; fees to officials in, 17-18. 

Landed aristocracy, size of plan- 
tations of, 7&-79- 

Landholders, number of, 77 n. 

Leaseholds, size of, 78. 

Leases, periods of, 68; rent re- 
served, 69; improvements stip- 
ulated, 69; provisions against 
waste, 70 ; on proprietary man- 
ors, 92-94. 

Leasing of land, profits of, 70- 
72. 

Lloyd, Colonel Edward, opposes 
increase of land charges, 11; 
requires farmers to advertise 



INDEX 



105 



rates, 44; scattered estate of, 
82. 

Lloyd, Philemon, judge of land 
office, 14 ; opinion on boundary 
commission act, 26. 

Lloyd, Richard Bennett, 79. 

Lowe, Bennett, 95. 

Lowe, Charles, 14. 

Lower House of Assembly, in- 
vestigates reserving of land, 
18; passes boundary acts, 26, 
27; opposes alienation fines on 
devises, 31; passes enrollment 
bill, 33; accepts commutation 
agreement, 34; opposes quit- 
rent commutation, 37-38; peti- 
tions for renewal of commu- 
tation agreement, 45; debates 
quit-rent commutation, 49. 

Lutwyche, Thomas, 22, 22 n. 

Manor roll, 96. 

Manorial rights, 89. 

Manors, value of land on, 61 ; 
definition of, 89; long retained 
intact, 90-91. See also Pro- 
prietary manors. 

Militia bill, 49. 

Muir, Thomas, 44. 

Nicholson, Governor, advises 
settlements at head of bay, 12 ; 
complains of engrossing of 
land, 65, 65 n. 

North East Manor, 93. 

Northey, Sir Edward, 20, 21. 

Ogle, Governor, permitted to 
grant surplus, 2$ ; empowered 
to lease manors, 95. 

Orphans' estates, appraisement 
of, 70, 70 n. 

Overseer system, profits of, 75. 

Overseers, contracts of, 72; du- 
ties of, 73; dignity of, 74; 
number of slaves under, 74- 
75; losses by, 75; scattering 
of, 76. 

Parran, Young, 96. 
Patenting of land, 15-16. 
Patriot party, 49. 
Pennsylvania, value of land in, 

55- 
Plantation, definition of, 76; 
size of, 76-78. 



Proprietary manors, laid out, 
91 ; decline in royal period, 
92; begin to rent, 92; leases 
on, 92-93; rents on, 93; exten- 
sion of, 94-95; control of, 95- 
96; abuses on, 97; inaccurate 
surveys on, 98; revenue from, 
98-99; sale of, 100-101. 

Purchase price of land. See 
Caution money and Conditions 
of plantation. 

Quarters, 76, 76 n. 

Quit-rents, payable in tobacco, 
34; commutation of, 34; 
amount of, 35, 36, 48; collec- 
tion of, 40; specie demanded, 
41; Lower House wishes to 
commute, 45-47; cost of col- 
lection, 51; collected by sher- 
iffs, 52; economic effect of, 
54-56; proportion to value 
and rent, 54; force of, on 
waste land, 55 ; effect of varia- 
tions of, 56; retard develop- 
ment, 57; influence on size of 
holding, 58-59; in Pennsyl- 
vania, Maryland, and Virginia, 
59 n. ; effect of, on speculation, 
61; influence of, on engross- 
ing, 66-67. See also Commu- 
tation act. 

Randolph, Edmund, 65. 

Receivers of quit-rents, 40. 

Rent, amount asked, 69; im- 
provements as part of, 69; on 
proprietary manors, 93. 

Renting of land, 67-72. 

Rent-roll keepers, 40. 

Rent-rolls, improvement of, 51, 
53; show speculation, 61, 62, 
62 n. 

Reserving lands on warrants, 18. 

Sharpe, Governor, opposes in- 
crease of land charges, 11; ap- 
proves of land office, 16; no 
proclamation concerning sur- 
plusage, 23-24; suggests pro- 
vision against waste on 
manors, 70. 

Sheriffs, collect quit-rents, 52. 

Silver. See Coin. 

Slaves, as overseers, 74; number 
under an overseer, 74-75. 



io6 



INDEX 



Snowden, Richard, 86. 

Somerset County, inducement to 
take land in, 13. 

Sotweed Redivivus, 37 n. 

Specie, difficult to procure, 41. 

Speculation, restricted by weight 
of quit-rent, 61-62; in land 
warrants, 63; in newly settled 
counties, 86. 

Sterling money, quit-rents pay- 
able in, 33, 41. 

Stewards on proprietary manors, 
96. 

" Stringing " of land, 24. 

Surplus lands, fraud against pro- 
prietor in, 19-20; legality of 
proprietor's claim to, 20-21; 
offered to discoverers, 21-23; 
terms for, 23-24; suits for, 
cease, 23. 

Surveyor general, 14. 

Surveyors, 19-20. 

Surveys, on proprietary manors, 
96, 98. 

Taxes, compared in Maryland, 
Virginia, and Pennsylvania, 
57 n. 

Tenants, procuring of, 83-84. 

Tenements, size of, 78. 

Thomas, Philip, 14. 



Timber, waste of, 70. 
Tobacco, payable for quit-rents, 

34; payable for rent, 69. 
Town lands, 19. 
Tracts of land, division of, by 

inheritance, 66; disintegration 

of, 90. 

Upper House of Assembly, 
amends enrollment bill, 33; 
warns that quit-rent offer is 
too low, 46. 

Value of land, 60-61. 

Ward, Mathew Tilghman, 61 n. 

Warrants, issuing of, 15-17; 
speculation in, 63; partial as- 
signments prohibited, 64. 

Waste, by tenants, 70, 97-98. 

Western Shore, delegates op- 
pose commutation of quit- 
rents, 38-39; oppose tobacco 
tax for quit-rents, 46-47- 

Wheat, payable for quit-rents, 

33- 
Wolloston Manor, 90 n. 
Worcester County, inducements 

to take land in, 13. 

Young, William, 44. 



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